Anti-pattern

An anti-pattern in software engineering, project management, and business processes is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by computer programmer Andrew Koenig, was inspired by the book Design Patterns (which highlights a number of design patterns in software development that its authors considered to be highly reliable and effective) and first published in his article in the Journal of Object-Oriented Programming. A further paper in 1996 presented by Michael Ackroyd at the Object World West Conference also documented anti-patterns.

It was, however, the 1998 book AntiPatterns that both popularized the idea and extended its scope beyond the field of software design to include software architecture and project management. Other authors have extended it further since to encompass environmental, organizational, and cultural anti-patterns.