Author : Stavros Stavru Date : December 29, 2014

The human desire for choice is unlimited. At least this is advocated in many psychological theories of human motivation and economic theories of rational choice. And this is so natural – after all having multiple options gives us the freedom to select the ones which suit us best. However scientists have recently found just the opposite – having “too many” choice might be demotivating and even repellent to consumers. The most popular demonstration of this is the so called Jam experiment. It was conducted at a grocery store with two different tasting booths – one offering a limited number of flavors of jam (just 6) and one with quite an extensive collection (of 24). What researchers found was striking. Although the variety in the extensive-choice condition was initially more attractive, the percentage of consumers who subsequently purchased jars of jam was much lower than in the limited-choice condition – 3% vs. 30%!
The features of a particular software system could be defined as the options available to its consumers (whether functional or non-functional). Following the same fundamental assumption that rich set of choices is desirable – а tendency emerged to steadily and persistently increase the number of features. As this expansion never stops, software systems often become vulnerable to feature creep (or creeping featurism, featuritis, bloatware, etc.). And feature creep is proved to be a major contributor for most of the cost and schedules overruns, and is one of the root causes for software overengineering, software bloat and technical debt. Now taking into consideration recent scientific findings that ‘too many” options actually reduce consumers’ motivation to buy (the argument towards feature-rich software systems) – it is quite intriguing why is this trend still so strong today?
The Fatware Matrix is a tool to visualize the fat in a software system – all the features which do not bring any value to consumers but are costly to change and maintain. As such it could be used to manage and continuously improve the levels of feature creep and technical dept.

I. The Fatware Matrix
The Fatware Matrix is a six celled matrix which provides a graphical representation of the feature composition of your software system (by plotting each feature on its corresponding quadrant). The horizontal axis denotes the cost of maintenance (Low, Medium and High) while the vertical represents the value to consumers (None, Expectable and Additional). The cost of maintenence for a particular feature could be determined simply through measuring the cost of
change, the time spent on corrective/adaptive/perfective maintenance or enhancements, the perceived maintenance costs by the engineering team, etc. As for its consumer value – various models could be incorporated, including stated or derived importance questionnaires, A/B or mutli-variant testing, frequency of use, conversion rates, etc. None includes features which do not bring any value to consumers. Such features correspond to the indifferent and reverse features from the Kano model and the neutrals from Cadotte and Turgeon‘s one. Expectable are features which are expected and if not presented consumers would be dissatisfied. They could be mapped to the must-be and one-dimensional features from the Kano model, the dissatisfiers from Cadotte and Turgeon and the givens from Hill, Roche and Allen. strong>Additional covers features which bring additional (unexpected) value to consumers. They correspond to the attractive features in the Kano model, the satisfiers from Cadotte and Turgeon and the satisfaction drivers from Hill, Roche and Allen. The Fatware Matrix is presented below.

The Fatware Matrix

The color (and the letter) represents the type of the feature in terms of feature composition. In analogy to physical fitness and body composition, there are three major types: Fat (red), Bone (yellow) and Muscle (green). The number represents the cost of maintenance. As such “F3 Type Feature” for example is a feature which brings no or minimal value to consumers (stands for F) and has high maintenance cost (stands for 3).

II. Feature composition
The percentages of fat, bone and muscle determines the Feature composition of the software system. That percentage is calculated using the following procedure:

  1. Count the number of features for each quadrant.
  2. Multiple this number by the cost of maintenance for its particular quadrant (either 1, 2 or 3).
  3. Sum up the results per row to get the amount of Fat, Bone or Muscle.
  4. Divide the sum of Fat, Bone and Muscle to their total sum (Fat + Bone + Muscle) to retrieve the percentages of Fat, Bone and Muscle (aka the Feature composition).

Given below is an example of a software system with total of 19 features. Based on the distribution of these features on the Fatware Matrix, the software system consists of 32% fat, 46% bones and 22% muscles.

The Fatware Matrix - Example

III. Fatware, Boneware or Muscleware?
Depending on the percentage of fat, bone and muscle there might be three major types of feature compositions (in analogy to somatotypes). The first is the Fatware (or Endomorph). It is characterized with too many fat and under-developed muscles. Software systems with such feature composition are quite heavy-weight (or flab) and tend to consume a lot of energy (efforts and time) and/or are cumbersome in terms of improving and further developing. The second major type is Boneware (or Ectomorph). Typically such systems are very skinny – they have many bones but small amounts of muscles. This makes them less attractive to consumers and risks their survival in the long run. The last major type is Muscleware (or Mesomorph). It is characterized with large amounts of bones and muscles. Software systems with such feature composition are quite lean and have great potential to gain a leadership status. Of course there might be feature compositions in between (e.g. endo-mesomorph, ecto-mesomorph, etc.). Examples of the three major feature compositions (Fatware, Boneware and Muscleware) are given below.

The Fatware Matrix - Fatware, Boneware & Muscleware

IV. Diets and exercises
Diets determine whether and what type of new features could be added to the software system depending on its feature composition. For example the diet for the Fatware should be restricted to not allow any new features to be added until the fat is reduced to acceptable levels or cautiously adding new features (if this cannot be avoided) which are either bones or muscles (but not fat). On the other hand the diet for the Boneware should include lots of muscles and fewer bones. As for the Muscleware – it is recommended to be muscles- and bones-rich. The fitness of the software system could be secured also with exercising. The exercises could be defined as specific actions towards particular features depending on their quadrant within the Fatware Matrix. Some recommended exercises are presented below.

The Fatware Matrix - Exercises

V. How to be Muscleware?
The Fatware Matrix just shows you whether you are suffering from feature creep and technical debt and if so – recommends you different diets and exercises. However there are many other things you could do to make your software system Muscleware, including (but not limited to):

And remember – being a Muschleware is not a one-time effort! Lacking balanced diets, continuous exercising and special fitness efforts (with some of them just listed above) would quickly bring back the fat in your software system and turn it into Fatware.

Original article: https://www.agify.me/the-fatware-matrix/