12 Agile Principles — #10 of 12

Simplicity Is Essential

“Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential.”

This next statement emphasizes simplicity. How many times have we seen projects go out of control because the requirements become much too complex and very difﬁcult to implement and the requirements become over-designed to try to satisfy every possible need you can imagine?

This is also related to the concept of “just barely good enough” — don’t over-design something; keep it as simple as possible. In some cases, it might make sense to start with something really simple, see if it ﬁlls the need, and then expand the functionality later only if necessary. Another concept in agile is called the minimum viable product, which deﬁnes the minimum set of functional features a product has to have to be viable at all in the marketplace.

It’s generally much more effective to take an incremental approach to start with something simple and then expand it as necessary, rather than starting with something overly complex that may be overkill for the requirement.