How feature creep, missing change control and weak specs create waste — and sometimes sink companies.
Engineers and developers love to make things better. That’s the job. But there’s a dark side: when “make it better” becomes “add everything possible,” products grow more complex, delivery slips, maintenance costs explode — and the customer often never pays for the extra work. The result is double cost: (a) you build things the customer didn’t ask for; (b) your engineering team is taken away from true value-adding work.
Below I explain the practical danger, show real examples from the press, and give a concrete prevention playbook (specs, checkpoints, governance, contractual levers) you can implement tomorrow.
Two media-reported cautionary tales
Juicero — the poster child for over-engineering
Juicero built an expensive, internet-connected juicer that squeezed proprietary packs. Customers and journalists discovered the packs could be squeezed by hand — making the $400 machine redundant. The company raised ≈$120M, saw terrible press and had to shut down. This is classic over-engineering + product-market mismatch: lots of engineering, little customer value.
Quibi — big spend, wrong product fit
Quibi raised roughly $1.7–1.8B to build a premium short-form video platform. Despite A-list content and technical polish, it failed fast: the product didn’t map to how people used mobile video (user behaviour + pandemic effects), adoption lagged, and the venture shut down within months. This shows that high engineering and production investment won’t save you without product-market fit.
These cases are different — hardware and platform content — but they share the same root causes: unclear or optimistic specs, insufficient validation with users/operations, over-investment in non-differentiating features, and weak change control.
What it costs (concrete impacts)
- Direct development cost for unbilled features (engineer hours × fully-loaded rate).
- Opportunity cost: engineers not available for revenue-critical work (lost feature velocity).
- Time-to-market delays — losing first-mover advantage or missing seasonal demand.
- Technical debt & maintenance burden — more bugs, longer regression tests, higher support cost.
- Customer confusion & training cost — more features → steeper learning curves.
- Reputational & financial risk — from failed launches, lost customers or public embarrassment.
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Why this happens (the mechanics)
- Gold-plating mindset: engineers add “nice to have” improvements because they can – and it’s fun.
- Weak requirements discipline: vague or verbal specs (“we need it to be faster / nicer”) without measurable acceptance criteria.
- No change control process: ad-hoc requests go straight into developer queues with no cost/time impact logged (no change orders).
- Poor prioritization: lack of value-based prioritization (cost of delay, ROI).
- Incentives misaligned: teams rewarded on feature count or engineering metrics rather than customer outcomes or margins.
The concrete guardrails (checklist you must implement)
Product & Requirements
- Lastenheft / Pflichtenheft (Requirements Document)
o Lastenheft (what the customer needs / business requirements) → signed by Product Owner / Customer.
o Pflichtenheft (how supplier will meet those needs / technical spec) → signed by Engineering Lead and Customer.
o Include measurable acceptance criteria (performance numbers, conformance tests, UI workflows). - Traceability Matrix
Map every requirement to design items, tests and acceptance criteria. This prevents “hidden” features sneaking in. - Definition of Done & Acceptance Tests
No feature considered done until automated/manual acceptance tests pass and customer signs off.
Change Management & Governance
- Formal Change Request (CR) / Engineering Change Order (ECO)
Every deviation from spec or new request must be logged as a CR with: description, business value, effort estimate, impact on schedule/cost, owner. No work without CR approval. - Change Control Board (CCB)
Weekly CCB (product + engineering + finance + sales + legal) to approve/reject CRs. Thresholds: small changes = PMO approve; large changes = executive sponsor sign-off. - Freeze Dates & Stage Gates
Requirements freeze for each release; late changes routed through CCB and must pass a risk/benefit gate. Use incremental releases (MVP → pilots) rather than big-bang.
Prioritization & Economics
- Value & Cost-of-Delay Prioritization
Use WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) or Cost-of-Delay to rank backlogs; include maintenance and technical debt as items. - Feature ROI & Payback Calculation
For any requested feature, require a short ROI or payback note: projected revenue, margin improvement or cost reduction.
Delivery & Quality
- Pilot & Customer Validation
Put new features into a pilot group (representative customers/shops). Measure adoption & operational impact before scaling. - BOM & Configuration Freeze (hardware)
Freeze Bill-of-Materials prior to production. Any ECO to BOM requires sign-off and a cost/rework estimate. - Release Risk Registry & Smoke Tests
Maintain a risk register; pre-release smoke tests for critical flows. If risk > predefined threshold, hold release.
Contract & Commercial
- Change Order Clauses in Contracts
Clearly define scope, change order process, billing rates for out-of-scope work and acceptance criteria. No invoicing without signed acceptance. - Acceptance & Warranty Gates
Define formal acceptance procedures (UAT / FAT / SAT) and linked payment milestones.
People & Culture
- Product-Engineering Partnership
Embed a Product Owner who owns the backlog and business outcomes, authorized to say “no”. Train engineers on the commercial consequences of gold-plating. - Incentives
Reward outcomes (customer adoption, margin) not just feature velocity. Recognize engineers who simplify.
Example governance workflow (fast version)
- Requirements written & signed (“Lastenheft”).
- Engineering produces specs (“Pflichtenheft”) + effort estimate.
- Baseline agreed and BOM released.
- Dev proceeds; any new ask → CR → CCB within 3 days.
- Small CRs processed by PMO (documented); medium/large CRs require sponsor approval and updated timeline/cost.
- Pilot in controlled environment; acceptance tests executed.
- Production roll-out once pilot KPIs met.
Hard truths and caveats (alternative viewpoints & uncertainties)
- Not all customization is bad. Some features are differentiators. The guidance above is not “no customization” — it’s: choose it consciously with full visibility of cost, risk and upgrade impact.
- Regulation & safety can force extra work. In medical, aerospace or food, some extra engineering might be non-negotiable. Those cases need early alignment with compliance experts and likely a different commercial model.
- Market signals can change fast. Occasionally you must pivot and add features; the key is for pivots to follow the change control path and be time-boxed and ROI-oriented.
Bottom line (what to do tomorrow)
- Implement a simple Change Request form and CCB (even a one-hour weekly meeting) — stop untracked scope drift immediately.
- Require a 1-page ROI for any non-trivial feature before committing engineering hours.
- Pilot big features in a controlled environment before full roll-out.
- Add a “no work without CR” rule and enforce it for one month — you’ll see the backlog clear and true priorities emerge.
I can help you design your requirements and processes around this topic, run implementation workshops and save you potentially millions.
If this resonates – let’s talk.
If the situations I describe sound familiar—and you’re unsure what the next step should be—let’s connect. I help executive teams create clarity, focus, and momentum in complex transformation environments.