Do people tell you your systems are too complex?

Albert Einstein is credited with “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. Whether or not he said those exact words, it is undoubtable that he preferred elegant solutions to problems over unnecessarily complex explanations. But the question remains are your systems overly complex or are they simply solving inherently complex problems. Generally when I hear a consultant, especially an “IT consultant”, make this statement it normally comes down to 2 scenarios.

1.??????? Your systems are unnecessarily complex. This is often due to years of layering on one solution to a problem onto another, without having the full understanding of the problems you have yet to solve. Combined with lack of understanding of the domain by the designer if you have one. This eventually ends up in a kind of self-perpetuating spiral of sinking endless time and money, without ever really getting ahead of the market.

2.??????? The people claiming you are too complex don’t really understand the domain. Often times if we don’t understand something, the problem honestly often looks simple to solve, that is until you dive deeper and learn what is waiting for you on the next layer, and so on. Which then is often how you end up a few years later, and poorer in scenario 1.

The point to the quote above is you cannot, nor should you, try to simplify something to the degree that you lose the major functions to the problem you are trying to solve. But you should strive for elegant solutions that not only solve the immediate problem, but builds the foundation to solve those in the foreseeable future.

Take for instance, the power grid. To most people it looks simple, you have a wire coming into your house and it is connected to a power plant somewhere, simple. But in reality, it is one of the most complex systems humans have built. I won’t get into the details here, for the sake of simplicity, but it is a web of interconnected systems across national boundaries. It ?must keep a precise balance of power supply to the power demand from humans which are inherently unpredictable at times. If this balance is even 1% off, then you will either start blowing up parts of the grid, or you will get out of frequency and start tripping parts of the grid. Could you simplify the gird, yes. but you would then start limiting the functionality that we are now, and in the future, demanding of it. Limiting the ability to use more “supply driven” renewable power generation or limiting the amount of power at times for people to charge their new EVs. This is actually being proposed in some countries. The simple fact is the grid and the energy market as a whole needs to and is becoming even more complex to meet our justified demands of it. What we should strive for is not over simplicity, but elegance of the design. I always liked the phrase “hitting 2 birds with one stone” or often 3 or 4. However you need to be sure you know your stone, and your pitching ability well, otherwise you are likely not to hit anything. So, before you buy into the “simplicity pitch”, make sure you understand what you are trying to solve for now and in at least the foreseeable future. And make sure your team is experienced enough to throw that stone you have. The first step or the prototype is always easy, it’s the next and the following that get progressively difficult to solve.

Was this a complex story that could be simplified, perhaps, or perhaps it did not go deep enough. But it’s better to have spent 5 minutes reading it than loosing years of opportunity costs and waste to get you back to where you were in the beginning or even behind.

At Graphene we have spent the past 10 years focused on building a platform to do just a few things, but do them well. Are our systems complex? Well yes, but our development team has built and run at scale elegant solutions that solves some of the problems that has plagued the asset and energy management market for years. We can for instance manage complex AI driven algorithms on high frequency data on one or thousands of assets, without compromising safety and security. This enables you to continuously improve your assets and energy management to meet changing market conditions. We can harmonize your data identities on the built environment, then allow you to decide who you share your data with. This allows you can take advantage of the eco system of solutions out there on the market, without running and maintaining complex integration projects.

That is all we do, we don’t try to do everything, we would rather integrate with the eco system of solution providers first. If you would like to know more about it, drop me a line.

Graphene Edge, LLC