Client-side Simplifiers and Complicators

Simplifiers
Complicators
  • Project scope fits within client’s authority scope
  • Scope crosses organizational boundaries
  • Solution reduces job tedium, reduces procedural delays
  • Solution creates more user work, dehumanizes personal interactions
  • Solution reduces organizational friction, infrastructure clashes
  • Solution shifts power, confuses lines of authority, puts outside parties on critical path
  • Task-tailorable user interface
  • Mismatches between user interface and user tasks, capabilities
  • COTS product features anticipate direction of growth
  • COTS product features evolving toward different marketplace
 
  • Hidden costs: licenses, data entry, conversion
 
  • Mismatches with existing legacy-system constraints
 
  • Single-criterion optimization: speed; correctness
 
  • Creeping (baroque) elegance