Feature creep - Definition and Overview

Creeping featurism, or creeping featuritis, is a phrase used (usually within the sphere of software and information technology) to describe the (often erroneous) idea that more features make a thing or product better than the previous version. The negative connotations of "creeping featurism" principally indicate the "enhancement" of a product with spurious features which have been added with little consideration for any putative benefit or, more customarily, disadvantages.

A related term, feature creep, describes the tendency for a software project's completion to be delayed by the temptation to keep adding new features, without a specific goal.

This phrase is sometimes rendered as the spoonerism "feeping creaturism", which brings up the image of each new feature being a small creature which runs around going "feep, feep".

Many people criticize Emacs as being a prime example of creeping featurism. Emacs proponents, however, tout Emacs' all-in-one nature as one of its primary benefits. Multi-paradigm languages such as C++ have also faced such criticism.

Creeping featurism is an example of an anti-pattern.

See also

• Functionality creep, when a physical document or other non-computer related procedure ends up serving unexpected or unplanned purposes.
• Scope creep, when the features of a project gradually increase.
• Software bloat, the inefficient use of memory and storage space.