How do you avoid gold-plating features?

1 Define clear acceptance criteria

One of the main causes of gold-plating features is the lack of clear and specific acceptance criteria for each user story or feature. Acceptance criteria are the conditions that must be met for the product to be considered done and ready for delivery. They should be defined by the product owner in collaboration with the development team and the stakeholders, and they should be testable, measurable, and aligned with the user needs and the business goals. By having clear acceptance criteria, you can avoid scope creep, ambiguity, and unnecessary work.

2 Follow the principle of simplicity

Another way to avoid gold-plating features is to follow the agile principle of simplicity, which states that "the art of maximizing the amount of work not done is essential". This means that you should focus on delivering the minimum viable product (MVP) that solves the user's problem and provides value, rather than adding bells and whistles that are not essential or requested. You should also refactor your code regularly to eliminate redundancy, complexity, and technical debt, and to improve readability, maintainability, and performance.

3 Seek feedback and validation

A third way to avoid gold-plating features is to seek feedback and validation from the users and the stakeholders throughout the development process. By using agile techniques such as prototyping, testing, demoing, and releasing frequently, you can get early and continuous feedback on your product and validate your assumptions and hypotheses. This will help you to identify and prioritize the most important and valuable features, and to avoid building features that are not needed, wanted, or used by the customers.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?