What is feature creep

As you discover things about your users and how the main problem affects them, your definition of the problem might change. With that, your product changes, too — and that is ok. You want to have an iron-clad definition of the problem, so that your product solution is solid. But more often than not, anything that comes as an afterthought, as to what the product should do, tends to not be worth it.

Remember that users tend to prefer simpler products that get the job done, and big problems that call for solutions tend to come up in the research. Overall, you want to maintain the original solution to the original problem. Additional fluff to the design and main concept can make the entire team lose sight of what is important: the user, and helping the user overcome that original problem.

After a while, you and your team will come to recognize product changes that smell of future headaches and late-night working. To have everyone recognize feature creepiness is ideal, as it stops destructive ideas before they have the power to damage the user experience. Having people in your team contribute is a good thing — it brings more points of view and skill, resulting in better decisions, right? Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple. When it comes to making sure everyone is on the lookout for the feature creep, communication and a chain of command are key.

However, there has to be a system to separate the good feature ideas from the bad ones. Open communication is a great idea. People should be free to communicate not just ideas, but also feedback on those ideas. In this game, the Product Manager will play a big role in creating this dynamic where everyone can, ideally, create meaningful designs while quickly identifying cases of featuritis.

Trello is a project management tool whose popularity has grown immensely since it was founded back in By , Trello had a whooping 19 million users and less than employees. That same year, Trello was bought by none other than Atlassian — a major project management player that also owns JIRA.

From Trello. Jira follows a similar path, but offers a whole plethora of features. There are many who say that the Atlassian move to buy Trello was logical: Trello was catering to a different group of managers and companies, while JIRA remained mainly popular with developers.

Atlassian needed a way to diversify their base. Trello saw that not everyone needed intricate and complex management tools, and offered a functional product that had users coming back. We like to think this was a win-win: today, JIRA and Trello can be used together, benefitting users who do want a little more than a simple board.

Today, most of us have at least heard of Zoom. With the pandemic, Zoom became a hot topic as people flocked over to the software for both work and fun. But what of the competition? The pandemic was good to most platforms that helped people communicate, with names such as Discord and Slack being mentioned over and over as people tried to work remotely.

The reason why may lie in the simplicity of Zoom. Most users never even truly interact with the interface, but simply follow a link into the call. When Google Drive launched back in , it was seen as more of a curiosity. It was difficult for anyone to see this new open-source software to ever truly compete with a giant such as the Microsoft Office pack. However, as time passed, it became clear that Google was on to something: people flocked over to Google Drive, which grew in relevance, market share and popularity.

From G Suite. But why? People were already so used to Microsoft Word or Excel, why change? Is it just because Google Drive is free? As it turns out, it could have to do with the acute featuritis that Word and Excel suffer from. Many users who relied on Word never truly learned to make the most of the tool — and Google Drive was much, much simpler.

Google took all those features that few people used and got rid of them — reducing the features until only the truly key ones remained. Can products that have too many features succeed? Unfortunately, yes they can.

Other examples include brands so well-established, they can afford long trials of new features and exploring new ground to grow their base. Facebook is such a popular platform, it can be easy to think that the design team over at Facebook can do no wrong.

However, the platform has evolved from a simple place to stay in touch with your friends. Today, Facebook can be a place to stay current with the news, to watch live events, to buy and sell things….

From Axios. So when does it end? For a giant like Facebook, creating, testing and implementing a new feature might as well cost peanuts. But does this all help the user experience?

Those reasons are:. A project that has no clear scope is very easy to grow too large without a clear direction. When a project has no purpose, it's very easy to add and remove features just to meet immediate needs.

In a project of any scale, documentation is essential. With documentation, one can see how far the project has gone; what features are installed and removed, and why. When a project has poor documentation or even none at all, it's easy to add a feature regardless of context, such as what has been done before, goals, and reasons. Making decisions is a difficult task and it gets more difficult the more people have to make decisions.

This can get worse when the stakeholders do not have basic knowledge about the project. On the other hand, not involving stakeholders can also be bad because the stakeholders are in charge of directing the project. From the causes described above, you at least have an idea of what to do to prevent your website from being damaged by feature creeps.

To make your website completely avoid feature creep, let's take a look at the detailed steps you can take to build your website. One of the reasons feature creep can occur on your website is because you don't have a clear focus on the process of building your website. This has an impact on adding or removing features for no apparent reason. To prevent this from happening, you must have a goal or define the core of your website.

There are several ways in which you can determine what is essential for your website:. You can do research on your website visitors or your business customers. You can find out what things they need from your business, such as products, services, and of course, features on your website. After you get the data about your customer's needs, it's time to make priorities. You may not be able to meet all of your customers' needs in the features on your website.

This is because there may be a conflict of features that your customers want, which if you implement it on your website it will actually cause feature bloat. Having priorities can help you to identify features that can provide a lot of value to customers and find ways slowly to accommodate all the needs of your business customers. Your website may already have a purpose or core as a guide for you to develop your website. However, sometimes problems appear suddenly and you have to solve the problem quickly.

You might be thinking about adding a feature to deal with that problem. However, is the addition of that feature aligned with your goals? Especially in the case of software, the temptation to succumb to feature creep is often intense.

Software developers are constantly thinking of new ways to improve their products, and at a certain point, project managers must put a stop to it. Feature creep in this case can be reduced by having frequent project meetings to remind participants in the project of the goals which were stated at the beginning. When developing any kind of new product, the team should always meet together before starting work to agree on what is being created, what the team wants it to do, and how the product will accomplish these goals.

Efforts to discourage scope creep are not designed to punish creativity. With every new draft, there are more and more ideas that pile on. That is scope creep. Also referred to as feature creep, feature bloating, or our favorite - featuritis.

Because it can be compared to a virus - it multiplies until the host project is not able to function properly. The main causes are lack of project management and product leadership. When working on an update, the project must have a clear product owner who can decide which suggestions will be implemented and which will not.

In general, companies with limited resources are better at focusing on what matters. That is especially true for feature creep situations. When you are limited in time, human power, and money - you will make sure that you are working only on those features that will have the biggest impact. Everything else can and should wait. Another cause of scope creep is perfectionism. In reality, every SaaS would benefit more from launching a well-rounded feature now, rather than a perfect feature 6 months later.

While feature creep may seem like something that is just irritating to work with, it is much more than that. Not only can it significantly decrease the quality of the final feature, but it may bring the project to a complete halt. Feature creep does exactly that, it clutters the interface, slowly but surely.

When you have one feature that you are adding it is not a big issue, but with feature creep, you are adding much more than is needed. At first, everything seems important, but that is exactly what feature creep does to you. It blinds your judgment until you are staring at a Pollock painting.

If you need to cut an apple, would you pick a kitchen knife or a Swiss Army knife? Sure, everything has its place and use, but chances are that you would go for a basic knife. It has fewer functions but it gets the job done. It is great to have a robust platform, but the big chunk of your functionalities should be hidden, as people want fewer choices, and overwhelming them with options will increase your churn rate.

Keep it in mind when designing your project and do not let featuritis push your users to simpler platforms. Feature fatigue translates into poor UX. The less effort a user has to put into solving their problem with the help of your tools, the better their experience is.

The more obstacles you put in front of users - the more user experience deteriorates, and feature creep will create a lot of these obstacles. But there is another cost component to it and it is of course - internal costs.

With every additional feature, you have to allocate more resources to finish the project. Financial costs - the time of your team is expensive. Feature creep makes sure that you pay more than you should.