Simplicity is a characteristic that I've come to appreciate with experience, it is one of those opinions that my current self has the possible exact opposite of what my younger self had and is something that I want to write more about. This specific post is a comment on the article: Nobody Gets Promoted for Simplicity
Simplicity is a powerfull characteristic, but it is very subtle and hard to grasp, it is not obvious why it is better, and it is not easy to build a simple solution, even if you agree it is desirable. I don't agree with the article, and I see some options to help surface the power of simplicity:
- in case this is not a project from the start, where you are working in a system already working, you can substitute complex parts with a simple one and you need to show how this improves important metrics. If you can't do that, then you can't blame it on simplicity. Or you are not competent enough to build a simple solution that works or the complexity was necessary (or both).
- you need to improve your communication, you need to convince everyone with arguments why simplicity is better. If it really is, then there must be a chain of thought, a reasoning that others can follow and get convinced. This can be really hard. If there is no way to communicate a reasoning why simplicity is better, then do it really is?
- you need a leadership that understand and values simplicity, and if simplicity is really usefull then by market forces companies that build simple solutions have an advantage over companies that do not, and this in turn makes people who understands simplicity have an advatange to become leaders. Simplicity is not the only thing that matter, it is only a small advantage over hundreds of other characteristics, so you can't expect that every leadership will understand the importance of it, but they must exist if simplicity is such a big advantage as we think it is.
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