What is Gold Plating?

Gold plating is adding features or polish the customer never asked for — extra scope injected by the team itself, usually with good intentions ("they'll love this"). PMI treats it as a defect, not a gift: it adds cost, risk, and testing surface without an approved requirement behind it.

Exam distinction worth keeping sharp: scope creep is uncontrolled change from outside the team; gold plating is uninvited generosity from inside it. Both are wrong for the same reason — undocumented, unapproved scope.