custom snowball

Meanings

1. A cascading chain reaction in which a single non-standard feature, modification, or workaround forces the creation of subsequent custom solutions to maintain compatibility, ultimately resulting in disproportionate complexity and technical debt.

1. To rapidly increase in complexity due to cascading custom requirements.

Etymology

From custom + snowball, referencing the snowball effect, where a rolling snowball gathers mass and momentum. Coined to describe how a small deviation from a standard process gathers complexity.