Abstract
In this paper we present a case study of the use of SCRUM in an applied research scenario, consisting of the detection and identification of human faces in a large database of photos. The study shows how the adoption of agile methods was important to deal with uncertainty and unstable requirements, allowing adaptable development with opportunity to learn from the development process. The implementation of experiments reveals, as our research advances, the applicability of techniques to support the solution for the requirements. All sort of problems with illumination, pose, low quality of image and other type of noise were present as obstacles to accuracy in different approaches for detection and recognition. Fast retrieval of similar faces was also necessary. In the end, the requirements were successfully tackled by developing an efficient and short implementation of face alignment, feature extraction and search.