Simplicity: A New Model - Agile Management | NOOP.NL

Simplicity: A New Model

Note: This article will be part of the book Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders. You can follow its progress here.

Ah, simplicity.

We all seem to want it, but we rarely seem to get it.

Many experts have discussed simplicity and complexity. But their contributions often confuse various terms, which hasn’t led to a simplification of the discussion itself.

Here is my attempt to clear things up a little…

What is simplicity?

Simplicityusually relates to the burden which a thing puts on someone trying toexplain or understand it. Something which is easy to understand orexplain is simple, in contrast to something complicated. - Wikipedia

If you’re going to discuss simplicity, it is important to know the difference between complex and complicated.Not knowing the difference means you might apply exactly the wrongapproach to the right problem. (Or, the right approach to the wrongproblem.)

I believe the difference needs to be explained using two dimensions. The first dimension is about the structure of a system, and how well we are able to understand it:

• Simple = easily understandable;
• Complicated = very hard to understand.

The second dimension is about the behavior of the system, and how well we are able to predict it:

• Ordered = fully predictable;
• Complex = somewhat predictable (but with many surprises);
• Chaotic = very unpredictable.

The Structure-Behavior Model

My underpants are simple. I found it easy to understand how they work. But my watch is complicated.If I took it apart. it would take me a long time to understand itsdesign and its components. And yet, neither my watch nor my underpantshold any surprises. (At least not for me.) They are ordered, predictablesystems.

A three-person software team is simple too. It takes only a few meetings, dinners, and beers to get to know everyone on a team. A city is (usually) not simple but complicated.It takes taxi drivers years to know all its streets, alleys, hotels,and restaurants. And yet, both teams and cities are complex. No matterhow well you know them, there will always be surprises. They arepredictable to a degree, but you never know for sure what will happentomorrow.

A double pendulum (two pendulums attached to each other) is also a simple system.It is easy to make and easy to understand. And yet, it undergoesunpredictable chaotic motion due to a high sensitivity to the initialsetup of the pendulum. And stock markets are also chaotic.They are by definition unpredictable, or else everyone would know howto make money on stock exchanges, and the whole system would collapse.But, unlike pendulums, stock markets are also extremely complicated. Themany different businesses and types of financial properties andtransactions make them utterly incomprehensible for a simple guy likeme.

Complicated refers to a system’sconstruction being too intricate to understand, unless you’re an expert,while complex and chaotic refer to a system’s behavior, which isunpredictable to a small or large degree.

Whatis complicated is not necessarily complex, like two cars in a garage.And what is complex need not be complicated, like two people in abedroom. (But these people’s behavior in their bedroom can be quite unpredictable.)

• Simplification is the act of making the structure better understandable (moving it from top to bottom in my model.)
• Linearization is the act of making behavior better predictable (moving it from right to left in the model.)

Unfortunately, linearization is (in laymen’s terms) usually confusedwith simplification. And that’s where the complications start…

How Does This Differ From Other Models?

Cynefinis a model devised by knowledge management scholar David Snowden. Itdescribes a typology of contexts using four domains: Simple,Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic, and is used to guide approaches todecision-making and policy-making.

However, Snowden doesn’t distinguish between the structure and thebehavior of systems. This can make discussions a bit complicated (notcomplex).

Management professor Ralph Stacey created something similar, called the Agreement & Certainty Matrix.It shows Simple, Complicated, Complex, and Anarchy (Chaos) as fourareas based in two dimensions: the degree of agreement and the degree ofuncertainty.

This model suffers from the same problem. I don’t see complicated and complex as two discrete domains. Instead, I see them as parts of different dimensions.That’s why my Structure-Behavior Model identifies six domains insteadof four. And some systems (like cities) can be both complicated and complex.

OK, Now We Can Revisit Simplification

I believe my Structure-Behavior Model is able to simplify discussions around simplicity, and to clear up some misunderstandings…

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. – Albert Einstein

With this quote Einstein meant that a system must be made understandable,which means moving it vertically, from the top of the model to thebottom (simplification). However, his addition “but no simpler” maps tothe behavior of the system. Einstein warned not to change the system horizontally, because that would change the kind of system (linearization.)

Simplicity is a myth whose time has past, if it ever existed. – Don Norman

In an inspiring article Don Norman discussed the value of having more features in a product, instead of fewer. More features means different behavior, and (often) also a different structure.In my diagram it is both a horizontal and vertical issue. (For example:Google just added Priority Inbox to GMail. This made GMail’s behaviormore complex for me. It also complicated the user interface, but I stillseem to understand it well enough.) Unfortunately, Don Norman used theterm simplification both for linearization of behavior (horizontally)and simplification of structure (vertically).

And so Doncomplicated his message, which is exactly why many people didn’tunderstand him. Maybe it would have helped if Don had used pictures:

The goal of visual thinking is to make the complex understandable by making it visible, not by making it simple. - Dan Roam

In his bestselling book The Back of the NapkinDan Roam suggests to use pictures to make things understandable bydrawing pictures. He clearly refers to moving things from complicated tosimple (vertically). However, his warning “not to make things simple”is, again, a confusion of terms. What Dan means is that pictures shouldnot change the complexity (behavior, meaning) of something, because thatwould mess up people’s ability to predict what the pictures are tryingto say.

And so…

Yes, by all means, simplify everything that is hard to understand!

Butno, you may not want to linearize (“simplify”) something, because thereduced behavior of what you offer may not be what your user hadexpected.

Thanks for reading. I hope it was simple enough to understand.