Control
There are several methods to control feature creep, including: strict limits for allowable features, multiple variations, and pruning excess features.
Temptation of later feature creep may be avoided to some degree by basing initial design on strong software fundamentals, such as logical separation of functionality and data access. It can be actively controlled with rigorous change management and by delaying changes to later delivery phases of a project.
Another method of controlling feature creep is to maintain multiple variations of products, where features are kept limited in some variations. Because the ever-growing, ever-expanding addition of new features might exceed available resources, a minimal core "basic" version of a product can be maintained separately, to ensure operation in smaller operating environments. Using the "80/20 Rule" the more basic product variations might support the needs of about "80%" of the users, so they would not be subjected to the complexity (or extra expense) of features requested by the other 20% of users. The extra features are still available, but they have not crept into all versions of the products.
At some point, the cost of maintaining a particular subset of features might become prohibitive, and pruning can be used. A new product version could simply omit the extra features, or perhaps a transition period would be used, where old features were deprecated before eventual removal from the system. If there are multiple variations of products, then some of them might be phased out of use.
Read more about this topic: Feature Creep
Famous quotes containing the word control:
“Just as men must give up economic control when their wives share the responsibility for the family’s financial well-being, women must give up exclusive parental control when their husbands assume more responsibility for child care.”
—Augustus Y. Napier (20th century)
“The inability to control our children’s behavior feels the same as not being able to control it in ourselves. And the fact is that primitive behavior in children does unleash primitive behavior in mothers. That’s what frightens mothers most. For young children, even when out of control, do not have the power to destroy their mothers, but mothers who are out of control feel that they may destroy their children.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)