When working on a new software product many people struggle with feature creep. This is where you feel that it’s necessary to keep adding features.

It’s easy to be swayed by things you see other apps doing, or by conversations with potential customers. I think a lot of times this urge comes from the fear of losing a customer who “really needs that feature.”

The truth is that each thing your app does requires development, maintenance, support, documentation, training, and so on. And estimates are usually wrong. So when you ask your developer, “how long will it take to add X”, you really need to multiply this estimate by at least 3x. And then you need to do the same for all the associated activities.

Let’s say you’re really sure that a particular customer will love this feature. You build it and do all the supporting activities. Only now can you find out if the customer will use it. That’s assuming you’re able to measure their usage, and assuming you 100% understood what they were asking for.

That’s a lot of risk you’re taking on.

How can you do things differently?

1. Collect data
   Use analytics to identify your app’s most popular features and slowest pages. This better equips you to know whether a feature will make an actual impact on customer satisfaction.
2. Say “no” by default
   Don’t do anything until you have 5-10 independent customers asking for it. And even then, ask them what the alternatives could be.
3. Think of 3 ways you could achieve the same outcome with less work, for example:
   - Instead of building an integration with another app, build a data import.
   - Instead of integrating AI-based chat, optimise your app’s search around the top 10 queries.
   - Instead of creating a report builder, build a data export and provide a free Excel template for slicing, visualisation, etc.

Nothing’s ever 100% certain but you’ll reduce wasted time/effort by basing decisions on real data and real demand. Being cautious maximises the use of your startup’s most precious resources: time, focus and money.