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I was put on a project as an architect recently. My conclusion is that it's over-complicated. Why? The problem that was put in front of the dev team was pretty

I was put on a project as an architect recently. My conclusion is that it's over-complicated. Why? The problem that was put in front of the dev team was pretty complex. So if you ask the dev team, it's a complicated solution to a complicated problem. And they are somewhat right. However, the problem didn't have to be this complex. If someone would've asked some questions about the 'why' of it all, they would've been able to come to that conclusion. But nobody did. So the team was working on an over-complicated system for an over-complicated problem. So, while I agree with the article that one might be under-estimating the complexity of a problem, it might be wise to look into whether solving the complex problem is actually necessary and whether 99% can be achieved by solving a less complex problem in a less complex way and accepting the solution isn't perfect.

nicbou 4y ago
I have dealt with something like this before. To keep it short, a paper process was digitised without any thought, and kept running at great expense, again without any thought. I went for the "why", and found that this whole thing that swallowed 45 man-hours a week could be reduced to a very quick daily cron job. I did that. My manager shrugged. I went to work elsewhere. It showed me how weird large corporations can get, but also how important it is to question requirements.
wildrhythms 4y ago
Classic case of someone bringing some elaborate 'problem' to the IT department, demanding some elaborate solution that they've decided is the only way, only for the IT staff to simply ask, "What are you trying to do?" and only then arriving at a much simpler, sustainable solution.