And yes, Nic, I do believe that it has become ridiculous how companies releasing and keeping their products in "beta" status as if it's a fashion statement!

Feature creep is definitely a problem that interferes with overall quality of the products being offered. More attention should be paid to things like these in order insure the quality of the things we use.

Good beta testers are something are a terrific asset although I'd like to point out that even if you have the very best team of beta testers on the planet there are so many things that prevent from being able to release the product that you want to release.

Lots of time the issue comes from budget, and time constraints, plus people at the top having stupid requests that make no sense at all.

My worst issue would have to be "feature creep" where you start with a bold and well thought out vision, but as you develop both you as the programmer and others (including beta testers and management) think of several new features to make it into the product.

If it isn't managed properly feature creep can ruin a good project, because often you need to squeeze and hack features in rather then elegantly implementing them. If you follow the more established methodologies this isn't a problem but in today's fast paced internet driven world so many products are developed with methods such as extreme programming, which is great for getting products out but a real challenge to manage properly.

That's my 2c, sorry if I drifted off the topic, I was typing everything that popped into my head... :S