Tradeoffs and Shifting Complexity

Oh hey, another article from Dave. But it just resonated with me so much!

We don’t really make software architecture decisions based on some rigorous cost/benefit analysis. Decisions are often more informed on existing biases, past experiences, and the tradeoffs people find most comfortable. Decisions also get slipped in under the cover of self-imposed sprint deadlines...sometimes, it seems, the act of making a decision or the need to “unblock” something gets elevated over the impact of the decision.

I think this is where the second implication of Tesler’s Law comes into play: “Who will inherit the complexity?” Is it a value or a cost that gets passed on to the user? It’s a simple question, but the answer dictates so much.

This really resonates—so much decision making gets made around how the teams building the software organize themselves, communicate, and basically work. And the outworking of those environments, those processes, is what often frames our decision making.