The undesirable property of IT systems that have unnecessary or under-used features. IT systems have a tendency toward bloat as new features are constantly added to them, while old features are almost never removed. In the book, I make the case that writing and signing off on a requirements document in advance of building an IT system invariably leads to feature bloat, and that every feature that does not contribute to the business goal of a system should be considered feature bloat. Feature bloat is the enterprise’s enemy: it increases costs, provides more opportunity for defects, increases the “attack surface” available to hackers, and requires that those extra features continue to be maintained over time. We used to think that scope creep was the danger—that is, additions to the feature list after development commenced—but in truth it is feature bloat, even if that bloat is in the initial set of requirements, that we should worry about.
— War and Peace and IT: Glossary, Mark Schwartz