Without rigorous care and attention software quickly becomes messy and unmanageable. Even with the best intentions entropy and complexity are a fact of life in growing applications. In software development as in many other contexts it is easier to tackle the symptoms than the cause. Systems Thinking calls this behavior “Shifting the Burden” and it is more widespread than you might think.
From your IDE to your automated build, from DDD’s ACLs to TDD and other TLAs, from backlogs to burn-ups, we are surrounded by props for coping with complexity. As appealing as these are, they also make us less likely to address the underlying problem of complexity itself.
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