I used to be puzzled by complex problems that cause incidents. I used to think that service disruptions or unavailability were due to complicated implementations, complex approaches that require brain power, or network issues where reliability is always questionable. After coordinating dozens of incidents, I began to be puzzled over how so many small mistakes were leading to incidents rather than complex ones.
Overlooked or straightforward implementations were the majority of the root causes. All of them looked like small mistakes in hindsight. Maybe it’s the nature of these situations: people often underestimate the complexity of solution design and approach, assuming everything is easy. Yet, the simplest solutions are the most complex ones as they require a thorough understanding of all fundamentals.
In his blog post, Lorin talks about why choosing the easy solution often trumps the simple ones. People opt for easy solutions due to production pressure to deliver a piece of work within a deadline. Easy solutions are naturally the ones that are fastest to implement. Nobody has given the time to design the simplest solution.
When we give enough time and chance to design the simplest, remarkable things happen. We’ve seen this various times in the partnership of Jony Ive and Steve Jobs. They also had production pressure, but Steve Jobs gave Jony the time and space to find the simplest solution from all angles, which led to inventing various things along the way. They never use the easy solution. But not every company is Apple. I don’t think the current Apple is the same as the one with Steve Jobs. These days, Apple has started to choose easy ones.
Lorin, I think rightfully, also accepts the failure of simple in the battle with easy. People will always choose the easy option if leadership doesn’t push for a simple solution and give the team time to think, experiment, and plan; even that sometimes means dropping everything and starting from scratch.
That’s why we’ll always have incidents or crappy product experiences, and the majority will be caused by people choosing, or being forced to choose, the easy way.
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