Funzione di scorrimento
La frase caratteristica creep risale almeno al 1990, come usato in un post Usenet comp.sys.mac sul MacWorld Expo di San Francisco di 15 aprile 1990 :
As an industry 'matures' everyone starts to look
the same and the shows
get less interesting, fewer and fewer really
wonderfully new and
striking products (I think it's because all the
relatively obvious stuff gets done). Everyone ends up playing 'feature creep' with their competitors.
Tre mesi dopo nello stesso gruppo, una risposta a un "suggerimento Finder 7.0" su 13 luglio 1990 :
There's really no need for something that specific:
System 7.0's
InterApplication Communication model already
provides a foundation for
doing this sort of thing. ... Apple hasn't actually
designed a stream Manager with the functions that you describe,
probably because they
wanted to leave something for the developers to
do. I also suspect
that Apple System Software Engineers probably
have better things to worry about than standardizing a Spelling
dictionary. In a previous
message, somebody mentioned Feature Creep, and I think it applies very
well.
Nel 1993, era più comune in Usenet
featurism strisciante
La frase precedente featurism strisciante compare in Jargon File 1.1. 3 (datato 22 luglio 1981) come forma di gergo sonoro:
creeping featurism => feeping creaturism
La funzionalità creep non viene visualizzata fino a Jargon File 4.1 .0 (datato 12 marzo 1999):
:feature creep: n. The result of {creeping featurism}, as in
"Emacs has a bad case of feature creep".
Requisiti di scorrimento
Anche la caratteristica creep si manifesta in snippet di Autorizzazione del Dipartimento della Difesa per gli stanziamenti per l'esercizio fiscale 1985 , pubblicato in 1984:
Experience has shown that longer production runs result in requirements "creep". To improve this estimate for budgetary purposes would require the Air Force to formally task the contractors to provide cost estimates detail keyed to a hypothetical production rate.
L'anno seguente, uno snippet di Stanziamenti del Dipartimento della Difesa per il 1986: audizioni dinanzi a una sottocommissione della commissione per gli stanziamenti, Camera dei rappresentanti, novantanovesimo Congresso, prima sessione, parte 2 dice:
We have put a very solid reign on gold-plating, on requirements creep, and on engineering change orders. Everything that has any impact on the cost of a contract once signed, must be approved for a waiver by the CNO, by me or the Commandant if it is a Marine program.
Nel 1986 compare nei documenti IEEE sull'avionica e nel 1987 i registri delle conferenze IEEE e da lì in altri libri di ingegneria del software.
Spostamento della missione
Il Feature Creep probabilmente non deriva da mission creep , definito dal Oxford English Dictionary come:
orig. U.S. Mil. slang a gradual
shift in political or strategic objectives during the
course of a military campaign, frequently
resulting in an unresolved conflict or open-ended
commitment; also in extended use.
La loro prima citazione è del 1991:
We're going into a conflict with an ill-defined
mission, there is mission creep in a much more
compressed time frame, [etc.].
La prima che ho trovato è nel Los Angeles Times di domenica 27 giugno 1993 ("Soldati del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale - Aggressive Peacemakers, US Marines Disegna i Signori della Guerra della Somalia e Scrivi un Progetto militare per le campagne future "):
But Abbot never did just the minimum in Somalia; he was singled out, in fact, by Gen. Johnston as one of the commanders who went beyond the Marines' primary mission of securing food-supply routes and neutralizing Somalia's warring clans and bandits--a task accomplished within two months of the Marines' arrival--into such development projects as rebuilding local police departments, schools and community centers. Johnston called it "Mission Creep."
Other creep
Ecco un 1960 "strisciamento di nuclei" e un 1983 "specialità creep" , sia da Rivista militare .