Bulldozer00's Blog

For the non-geeks reading this post, the “!=” symbol is the C++ programming language token for “not equal“.

It seems like a lot of people think that classifying something as “complex” is the same as calling it “complicated“, and vice-versa. That conclusion can be,  and often is, true, but it can also be false. I associate “complicated” with “not-understandable” – except to a select few experts. I think of  “complex” to be the equivalent of something like “intricately elegant” and understandable to far more people than just experts.

Let’s take an example to illuminate my viewpoint. Assume that the black box system below functions delightfully. It’s reliable, responsive, easy to learn, and does what its users want without frustrating them in the slightest.

Now, in terms of complicated and complex, consider what the system may look like under the covers:

Of course, most users don’t give a shite what goes on under the covers, but the designing org and its people better well know what does – unless they luckily don’t have any competition to deal with, and hence, have their customers in a vice grip.

You see, at some point in time, the users will want improvements to the system as their needs evolve. If the original team of builders of implementation #1 are the only people who know the (so-called) design well enough to change it without breaking any existing capabilities, then the development org is hosed if those people leave. In effect, the org is held hostage by a small cadre of people. D’oh!

In the complex-complex implementation on the far right, even if the original builders leave the development org, the (relatively) elegant and well thought out design structure facilitates easy on-boarding of replacement builders. As an added bonus, the effort needed to add features and enhancements to the product is way less costly and risky than the other jaggedly complicated implementations.

So, given the portfolio of products in your org, how would you assess them in terms of the complexity and complicated attributes? If, and it’s probably a big IF, you could publicly communicate your assessment without fear of marginalization, or worse, how many people in your org do you think would publicly agree with your assessment? Uh, how abut privately? Would the number of public “agreers” match the number of private “agreers“?