A Question on Simplicity

 

What is Simplicity? We have heard about the 'KISS' design principle (an overly abused cliché). For those who have not, the KISS principle states that simplicity should be a key goal in design, and that unnecessary complexity should be avoided. Edward De Bono published a book with the same title ('Simplicity') emphasizing the importance of keeping things simpler in this increasingly complex world. The great Albert Einstein once said – "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction". However, he also warned that "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler". No doubt, being simple is important, but the key question is how simple we can go without trading off important details? I will leave this question for you to work on (read about Occam's razor if you are interested).

Simplicity is a common design requirement that appears in most projects and many project managers are spending huge amount of effort, time and money trying to meet this requirement. But are all these effort, time and money spent justifiable for the gain achieved with a ‘simple design’? Are we overdoing it? What should be the baseline? I have seen people splurging thousands of dollars just to simplify a process in a system that is only used by one user (the administrator) once or twice a year. My advice to all project managers is – do not get trapped and follow the ‘KISS’ design principle blindly. Do your due diligence evaluation and ROI assessment on whether a design should be further simplified and know when and where to stop.

Before we wrap this up, let's take a look at the picture above. It summarizes all that I have talked about in one simple picture. Are you able to get it?