developmental
adj.adj. relating to the way someone or something grows and changes over time. You use it to describe the stages of a child's growth or the early steps of a new project.
adj. relating to the process of growth, progress, or evolution through successive stages. Often describes biological maturation or the preliminary phases of a product or system.
The doctor tracks the child's developmental milestones.
The new software is still in the developmental stage and requires extensive testing before its public release.
Psychologists study developmental changes across the human lifespan to understand how cognitive abilities and social behaviors shift from infancy through old age.
Typically precedes the noun it modifies; frequently collocated with 'milestones', 'stages', or 'disorders'.