Walk the Week - Keeping it Simple

I remember taking advice from a Queen’s Counsel – a senior barrister in the English legal system – on the wording of an important letter in a dispute. Having listened he immediately dictated the letter to me over the phone. It was perfect - short and making all the points required in elegant and above all simple prose. It neatly avoided all of the potential legal hazards I was worried about.

By contrast how many times have promising projects developed a new and very clever system or way of working, only for it to founder and not be taken up in practice because the intended users find it too complex.

Really good presenters on intricate and difficult professional topics can explain their subject in simple terms so the audience can actually understand even if they don’t have quite the same expertise. As Albert Einstein said; “If you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it well enough.”

They are applying the KISS principle – an acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid. This is described by Wikipedia as a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960. The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided.

The phrase was first said to have been coined by the late Kelly Johnson, who was the lead engineer at the Lockheed Skunk Works (a place responsible for the S-71 Blackbird spy plane amongst many other notable achievements). As Wikipedia goes on to say The principle is best exemplified by the story of Johnson handing a team of design engineers a handful of tools, with the challenge that the jet aircraft they were designing must be repairable by an average mechanic in the field under combat conditions with only these tools. Hence, the "stupid" refers to the relationship between the way things break and the sophistication available to repair them.

KISS is now seen as an important design principle in many engineering professions (including software engineering) and is often brought to bear by managers in many professions as well as by trainers and educators– see  KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) - A Design Principle.

This article 10 Tips To KISS Your Life also suggests the principle has quite a general application Too many people over-complicate things in life. This can lead to paralysis by analysis. If you apply the KISS principle to your life, you will be more productive, feel better about the decisions you make, and can have a happier and more pleasant disposition.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s sums it up well when he says “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.