People Management • Dictionary

Accidental Complexity

Jul 1, 2023

“All software-intensive systems have to handle essential complexity (user needs). Everything else is accidental complexity that slows down the system.”
– Sidu Ponnappa

Bad decisions add cognitive load to the organization without providing value to the user. Examples include:

Bad HR policies.
A business leader within the organization wants the website or app of his business unit to look different. The user does not care.
Building a confused organization structure/hierarchy. The user does not care. For example, the Twitter Fail Whale image had birds flying in different directions.
Choosing a sub-optimal stack because developers in that stack are more cost-effective to hire.
Building a low-trust work environment

“Low margin businesses (eg many media biz) often create an internal culture of ‘survival of the fittest’, where different divisions compete, viciously, to eke out another 0.5% profit. Makes digital transformation even harder…”
– Alex Watson, Ex Head of Product at BBC.

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