Do you build a reception area for your house?

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All hotels have a reception area. Most companies have a reception area. But most homes don't have one. Why? Because we don't need a reception at home.

Then why do we build features which are not necessary in an application? 

Below is the standish survey for state software projects. Even though this survey was done in 2002 this is still a good representation of feature usage.

Most of the time this happens when a fixed price contract is given to a vendor. I have first hand experience in developing some features which I was sure will not be used anytime in the life span of the application. To give an example: Most applications have a master data maintenance section. This is to be used by system's owner or administrator. People spend enormous amount of time developing this. Out these master data administrator might use them once or twice to make some tweaks. Otherwise this data is pretty static.

Why spend time on a feature which is not going to be used. Use agile model and develop features which are useful. Stop development when the feature's listed cannot carry their weights.

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