The detrimental effect of adding too many features to the product is also known as feature creep. In this writing, we will explain this term in more detail and provide some tips for avoiding feature creep.

What is Feature/Scope Creep?

Feature creep means adding an excessive amount of features to a product and causing the product to be more complicated to use.

The term feature creep has several other names such as concept creep, project creep, project scope creep, featurism, and featuritis.

What causes it?

Adding an excessive amount of features to a project causes feature creep.

After the project starts, the people whom you cannot say no to, such as managers, and stakeholders might ask you to add some features. Because of not being able to say no, you add those features. As you add more, creating a feature creep in inevitable. Therefore, the inability to refuse your managers leads to feature creep.

Why is it bad?

Feature Creep is detrimental to the product's usability because of created complexity.

• Detrimental to project management - The project development will deviate the project from deadlines and budget plans.

• Detrimental to user experience - Complexity generally diminishes functionality. When users face excessive features, they feel easily lost and dissatisfied because of spending too much time figuring out what all those features are.

In addition, the users might churn and choose a less complicated alternative because of facing feature creep in a product.

Prevention?

1. Know your users

   1. Get to know users' engagement with your product. Their interaction with your product matters a lot for you to understand the functionality of the product.

   2. Knowing your users will help you decide which feature to add and remove.

   3. It is sensible to use session recording tools and conduct end-user testing

   4. User feedback is one of the best indicators to understand features usage level

2. Plan, Research and Validate

   1. It is vital to have clear and precise plan from the initial stage. It will guide the team throughout the development, especially when problem arises.

   2. It is important to review only the essentials based on the market research, be realistic, especially when it comes to time and set clear guidelines about validating incoming feature requests.

3. Stick to original product plan

   1. When you have a clear and precise plan for the product, the next step is sticking to it.

   2. Sticking to original plan by yourself is not enough. Every person within the business should be on the same page.

4. Learn to say NO to features requests

   1. When project starts, many feature requests are being made. Especially when the request comes from the stakeholders. You need to say NO to features and stick to the original plan. You also need a viable reason for saying no.