When building a software product, there’s no universal approach or a single ‘right’ way to do things. It takes the combined effort and expertise of the development and design team, and effective, direct communication with the client to create a product that performs according to expectations. But often, excessive engineering casts an expensive shadow over the development process.
By excessive engineering, or overengineering, we mean solving problems that are not relevant to a particular project. It can be well-intentioned or it can result from the team’s lack of experience or miscommunications. Either way, solving non-existent problems poses a serious challenge to the product. Overengineering may lead to a delayed release, budget inflation, and a poor-quality end product.
The need for programmers is growing, and accordingly, new professionals are starting engineering careers, and new tools and frameworks continue to flood the industry. So it’s safe to say that the overengineering issue isn’t likely to go out the window any time soon.
If you want to build a robust product that functions exactly how you imagined, you should be aware of this problem, know how to spot it, and more importantly, how to avoid it. In this post, we talk about why developers tend to overengineer and look at the practices that help eliminate redundant development.