Avoid “Gold Plating” |
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| Written by Graham Stoney | |||
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Designers should not attempt to exceed requirements as this usually adds to development time, verification effort and manufacturing costs. It is often referred to as gold plating or feature creep. In some cases, when the simplest design choice ends up exceeding requirements it can be useful to change the requirements to reflect the improved features to the end user; however, be extremely careful as this is how feature creep begins and this can easily end up blowing out project resources. Gold plating is best avoided, and it usually takes active work on the part of the requirements engineer to do this because engineers are naturally creative and often underestimate the added cost of unnecessary features in a design. If the simplest design choice ends up exceeding requirements, this should be stated in the design description. For example a device may have a requirement stating:
The design description might state: “The bridge rectifier on the power input meets the requirement 1. It also protects the circuit from damage if the batteries are inserted backwards, and the device will even function correctly in this mode.” If a design exceeds its requirements because the designer thought it necessary to include a safety margin, then the need for the safety margin should be stated in the requirements. Social Bookmark this page:         
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