Overengineering

Internal assembly of a Juicero Press

Overengineering, or over-engineering,[1] is the act of designing a product or providing a solution to a problem that is complicated in a way that provides no value or could have been designed to be simpler.[2] As a design philosophy, it is a violation of the minimalist ethos of "less is more" or "worse is better", as well as the related KISS principle.

It is generally criticized in terms of value engineering as wasteful of resources such as materials, time and money. NASA listed excessive features as one of the top 10 risks of failure for development projects,[3] and Mercedes-Benz developed and removed 600 non-essential features from their cars due to malfunctions, lack of usability and customer complaints.[4]

  1. ^ Gowing, Margaret. Britain and atomic energy 1939-1945. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14918996M/Britain_and_atomic_energy_1939-1945.
  2. ^ WorkNik. Definition of Overengineer. https://www.wordnik.com/words/overengineer.
  3. ^ Landis, Linda; Waligora, Sharon; Mcgarry, Frank; Pajerski, Rose; Stark, Mike; Johnson, Kevin Orlin; Cover, Donna (1992-06-01). "Recommended approach to software development, revision 3". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ Rust, Roland T.; Thompson, Debora Viana; Hamilton, Rebecca (2006-02-01). "Defeating Feature Fatigue". Harvard Business Review. ISSN 0017-8012. Retrieved 2023-01-22.