many business problems seem to be caused by complexity - that is, multiple unrelated things intertwined in one thing FIXME: try to align with [[Cynefin framework|cynefin framework]]; the "complex" problem according to RichHickey seem to imply a "complicated" problem in the cynefin framework. It appears to me that MANY problems in creating tech products are caused by things being *complex*. ## origins of complexity (All that follows is from the mind-melting Simple Made Easy by Rich Hickey) > Everytime you combine two things, you twist two more things. So every intertwining adds this burden, and the burden is combinatorial. Fundamentally, this complexity, this twisting, limits our capability to understand our systems. > — Rich Hickey, Simple Made Easy - The origin of the word "complex" is *mixing*, *intertwining*, *complecting* multiple things together. Like a knitted castle where it is quite hard to trace one thread along the castle. - Intertwined things seem to pose a problem to our brains. It seems that we are capable of holding only three to seven concepts simultaneously at the same time. - If we look at a complex system that is full of intertwined threads, we seem unable to hold all those threads together, and to make sense of it all. And so confusion arises. - This is a problem when one needs to *update* such a complex system. For example, fixing a bug in a complex software system, extending a complex product, or improving a metric of a complex business process. - When updating such a complex system, one can choose to ignore the complexity and to update the system without understanding how it works. By letting complexity grow over the long-term, the system gets more and more complex to update; and so even a simple change could then take painfully long to be implemented. ## how to fix complexity - *of what things should a system consist so that we don't have to spend time decomplecting and identifying the individual intertwined threads?* - we can aim to have a system with *no intertwined threads*, a system that consists of *only that one thread.* Such systems would have, by our definition, no complexity. - how should we call such a system consisting of only one thread? It turns out that there is a word whose origin is about being of one kind, of one fold. And that word is "simple". ![[Pasted image 20220412222150.png]] ## Examples: - see the notes that link to this page - some more examples from the internet: - [You should separate your billing from entitlements - Arnon Shimoni](https://arnon.dk/why-you-should-separate-your-billing-from-entitlement/) ## More readings - the talk [Simple Made Easy by Rich Hickey](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/) ([transcript](https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hickey_Rich/SimpleMadeEasy.md)) - the 1st Ideal of [The Unicorn Project](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44333183-the-unicorn-project) - the concept of [The Magical Number Seven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two) - the origins of word ["complex"](https://www.etymonline.com/word/complex) and ["simple"](https://www.etymonline.com/word/simple)