Does anyone have any practical suggestions about how to manage feature creep in GUIs?
I’m getting strong pressure from both internal and external sources to add, modify, tweak, etc. I always cringe when someone approaches me with the words ‘wouldn’t it be nice if…?’. I can’t just turn around and yell ‘NO’ at them, because often they are my superiors or customers.
Instead, I’m looking for suggestions to help explain why it’s a bad idea to be constantly adding new features, and in doing so, manage their expectations of the final product.
Have feature requests handled in a formal process, normally through the project manager and whoever analyzed the requirements originally. Its always better to palm those sorts of decisions off to someone that isn’t the developer, assuming that whoever is going to do that job is actually capable of it.
If you’re freelance then obviously charge for changes to the requirements, and if you’re an internal development team, then you could consider inter-department billing to make sure people think about what they want to spend money on.
Finally, expect requirements to change and feature creep to happen. If you code without considering what changes might be requested, or your process and/or deadlines are so inflexible that you can’t adjust to this, then you’ll find that the project will become a nightmare.