The Difficulty of Simplification | Generated by AI
That’s a profoundly relevant and common challenge in software development, business, and even personal projects. The difficulty of simplification and the act of deleting code or removing features often stems from human, organizational, and technical factors.
Here’s an analysis of why simplification is so hard and some strategies to counteract the tendency toward complexity:
1. The Roots of Complexity 🌳
The accumulation of features, code, and bureaucracy (often called ‘featuritis’ or ‘scope creep’ in software) happens for several understandable reasons:
- The Sunk Cost Fallacy: People and organizations are reluctant to remove a feature or delete code because they remember the time, effort, and money invested in creating it. They feel that deleting it invalidates the past work.
- Fear of Breaking Things: In large, legacy systems, components become highly interconnected. Deleting a block of code, even if seemingly obsolete, carries the high risk of introducing an unforeseen bug in a different, critical part of the system.
- The “Just in Case” Mentality: Features are often added, or code is kept, because someone might “need it someday” or because it was a special request from an influential stakeholder. This defense mechanism avoids short-term conflict but guarantees long-term complexity.
- The Ease of Addition vs. The Pain of Subtraction: It’s almost always easier to write new code or add a new process than it is to understand, refactor, test, and safely delete old code, or unwind a deeply rooted bureaucratic process.
2. Strategies for Simplification and Deletion ✂️
Simplification requires a cultural shift and a set of practical, technical strategies.
A. Establish a Culture of Subtraction (The Human Factor)
- Embrace “Subtraction as an Achievement”: Celebrate the act of deleting code, deprecating a feature, or simplifying a process. Fewer lines of code (LOC) that deliver the same value is a sign of a mature, effective team, not a sign of slacking off.
- Define Clear, Measurable Goals: In your blog example, the goal is cost savings and focus. Quantify the cost of maintaining all 9 translations (e.g., hosting, API calls, testing) and measure it against the actual traffic/conversion generated by non-core languages. If 7 out of 9 languages only account for \(1\%\) of traffic, they are candidates for removal.
- The “Three Whys” Test: Before adding a feature, ask “Why?” three times to ensure it truly serves the core mission. If the answers aren’t compelling, don’t build it. For existing features, ask: “If we delete this, what’s the worst that happens?”
B. Technical and Architectural Strategies
- Modular Architecture: Design systems where components are loosely coupled. This is the most crucial technical step to enable deletion. If a component (like a specific language translation module) is self-contained and communicates via a clear interface, deleting it only affects that component, not the entire application.
- Refactoring as Debt Repayment: Allocate specific time in every sprint (e.g., \(20\%\) of effort) not just for new features, but for refactoring (improving existing code) and deleting dead code. Treat complexity as Technical Debt that must be paid down.
- “Deprecate, then Delete”: Never delete a major feature instantly.
- Phase 1: Deprecate: Announce its upcoming removal and stop developing it. Hide the feature from the main interface (e.g., your blog’s language selector).
- Phase 2: Monitor: Use feature flags (toggles in the code) to disable the code for \(99\%\) of users while keeping the code accessible. Monitor logs and metrics for a grace period (e.g., 6 months) to ensure no critical user paths break.
- Phase 3: Delete: If the monitoring period passes without issue, safely remove the code and its associated infrastructure.
C. The Bureaucracy Parallel (Big Banks)
The same principles apply to organizational bureaucracy.
| Problem (Code/Bank) | Simplification Strategy |
|---|---|
| Old Process/Code is slow and complicated. | Process Automation: Replace manual sign-offs with automated checks. |
| Departments/Modules don’t trust each other. | Centralized Data & Clear Interfaces: Ensure all groups/modules work from a single source of truth. |
| Too Many Meetings/Features that don’t add value. | Audit and Eliminate: Hold a “Bureaucracy/Feature Audit” every quarter and mandate that \(10\%\) of all existing processes/features be retired. |
In short, simplification is less about a single technical fix and more about a constant, proactive, and disciplined cultural commitment to editing and cleaning, treating code/features/processes as liabilities that must prove their ongoing worth.
Would you like to explore how to set up feature flags in a project, which is a key technical technique for safely removing features?