Simplicity should be the key goal for all systems

Most non-trivial, innovative software systems have a lifecycle that spans years. Sustainability becomes a core attribute of the system's success as it rapidly matures to address new business needs. The requirements go well beyond just the system's functionality, making the product practically usable by users - flexible, performant, accessible.

What starts out being beautiful and straightforward with expressive code gets complicated and difficult to understand as the system evolves. This evolution is not optional - it is crucial to discover a product-market fit as early as possible. The only real option is to keep the complexity low.

Complexity affects all aspects of software development and can single-handedly slow down everyone, substantially increasing maintenance costs and frustrations.

Complexity can manifest itself in various ways: tangled dependencies, the tight coupling of services, inconsistent terminology, performance hacks, and deployment challenges. It makes the system harder to reason, more difficult to grasp, and trickier to change.

So simplicity is key to the product's evolution and growth.

Aiming for simplicity does not mean trivializing the system or dumbing down its functionality. It is about retaining the value proposition of the system while removing the accidental complexity resulting from the implementation.

Development processes and lifecycle should explicitly aim to remove all accidental complexity, meaning it is not inherent in the problem that the system solves, progressively simplifying the system over time.