Overengineering
Building something far more complex or robust than the situation requires. The extra effort adds cost and rigidity without meaningful benefit.
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Origin
The term has no single inventor, entering engineering vocabulary no later than the 1960s. The principle was formalised most directly through software methodology: KISS ("Keep It Simple, Stupid") was articulated by engineer Kelly Johnson at Lockheed's Skunk Works in the 1960s, and YAGNI ("You Aren't Gonna Need It") was coined by Ron Jeffries and canonised in Extreme Programming around 1999 — giving overengineering's opposite a name and a movement to back it.
Updated February 22, 2026