How do you balance simplicity and functionality in your system design?

In the ever-evolving tech landscape, it's essential to establish MVPs and adopt an incremental development approach. Each MVP requires thorough evaluation, leading to the reevaluation of subsequent objectives based on current business requirements. Embracing the concept of "Failing fast" and adapting swiftly is key. Having a well-structured product roadmap is fundamental to the success of any product endeavor. It's important to emphasize the significance of understanding the target audience and considering scalability and fault tolerance, along with other factors that depend on the specific system in question. Many systems often suffer from over-engineering/under-engineering, failing to meet even the most fundamental requirements.

Most systems are overengineered - they are designed to solve problems that will only occur in the future, and therefore this creates unnecessary burden during development. Build the system incrementally, in an agile way (ie with continuous feedback from users), and create a solid test framework around the functionality built. Do not implement features that only exist because they might be used in the future. Avoid the temptation to turn every system into a 'framework', an 'ecosystem' or a 'platform'. Make it good to solve a specific problem, and then expand it as the business use case develops

One of the traps that should avoid is to feel the obligation to define, seek clarity, and implement for all possible scope and goals you provision for your systems. Doing so can lead you to having the pressure to implement unnecessary complexity which gives little values to your systems while creating potential burdens or technical debts. There will be scope and goals that many stakeholders have in mind and request your service to implement; but at the same time, none of the stakeholders, including yourself, is able to seek clarity on it. In that case, you should hold back the urge to work (and create complexity) on such scope and goals until clarity is obtained.

When it comes to tools, technologies, and frameworks, the right ones for certain requirements, domain, and context usually come from experience. So you are free to have the idea "Maybe I can use {this tool} for {certain purpose}", but beware it can take quite a lot of time and effort to then realize whether the choice is right (fortunately) or wrong (unfortunately). This may not be the problem when you are playing around in your free time, but in the case you cannot afford time wasted, do your homework with online materials (articles, courses, videos, forums,...) to increase the chance the tools of your choice is the right ones.

The Principles and Patterns can act as double-edged knives: they provide tremendous values when applied in the right context, or give you regrets after you find out they become burdens due to misuse. Therefore, it is critical to understand when to enforce or compromise them. Personally, I choose a few as the core principles that I can enforce all the time. These core principles will act as the anchors. Other principles will be assessed case-by-case whether they should be applied or kept in mind for now. My personal set of core principles are: (1) All Tests pass; (2) Critical Components have 100% coverage; (3) Tests should be minimal and reasonable, but not abundant nor trivial (which is a trap to merely satisfy the other 2 principles).

As mentioned in previous section, since my own core principles allow me to have high test coverage code base, the refactoring will be much easier to execute. And sometimes, when a certain component is found to be more complex than it should be, besides refactoring, building a new one which is simpler and easier to maintain, then replacing the former with it can be considered.

In the realm of software and IT architecture, simplicity is not just a virtue—it's a strategic imperative. They lower the barriers for staff to understand, engage with, and improve upon the systems they use daily. These streamlined systems minimize the potential for errors, making troubleshooting a less daunting task. This simplicity ensures that teams can focus more on adding value rather than being bogged down by complex configuration, observability, maintenance, and diagnostic issues. Most critically, simpler architectures lead to increased stability and uptime. In today's fast-paced business environment, downtime is not just an inconvenience; it's a direct threat to your bottom line and reputation.