Overengineering

Overengineering, or over-engineering, is the act of designing a product or providing a solution to a problem that is complicated in a way that provides no value or could have been designed to be simpler. As a design philosophy, it is a violation of the practice of value engineering and the minimalist ethos of "less is more" or "worse is better", as well as the related KISS principle.

It has been employed intentionally in situations where an exceptionally wide margin of error is desired, but is otherwise considered an error of design due to the disproportionate time and resources needed to manufacture and maintain such products, and the introduction of unneeded single points of failure.

NASA listed excessive features as one of the top 10 risks of failure for development projects. As an example, Mercedes-Benz developed and removed 600 non-essential features from their cars due to malfunctions, lack of usability and customer complaints.