Discussing Complexity

This blog is for discussing the paper,  Urban and Enterprise Architectures: A Cross-Disciplinary Look at Complexity by Roger Sessions and Nikos A. Salingaros

Complexity is a major problem in enterprise architecture. Complexity obstructs business/IT alignment. Complexity obscures project vision. Complexity delays schedules, drives cost overruns, and hinders delivery of value. For enterprise architecture, complexity is the enemy.

Complexity is also a problem for urban architecture. In urban architecture complexity causes habitats that are destructive to the human psyche. Complexity can cause a variety of stress responses such as increased heart rate, sweating, and pupil dilation. For urban architecture, complexity is not just a matter of aesthetics; it is a matter of social wellbeing.

Although the symptoms of unmanaged complexity differ in these two fields, the laws governing architectural complexity are universal. Successful architectures follow the same basic principles whether those architectures describe biological, urban, or enterprise systems. And in all cases, the cost of ignoring these principles is disorder, dissolution, and ultimately chaos.

This cross-disciplinary paper explores the universal principles of controlling complexity and draws on lessons from urban architecture to better understand how to design successful enterprise architecture.
This paper was originally a lecture by Roger Sessions and Nikos Salingaros and is presented here as lecture notes.

Nikos A. Salingaros is the author of Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction (2004), Principles of Urban Structure (2005), and A Theory of Architecture (2006), as well as numerous scientific papers. Dr. Salingaros collaborated with Christopher Alexander, helping to edit the four-volume The Nature of Order during its twenty-five-year gestation, a work that had a huge impact on the Patterns Movement in Software Architecture.

You can download the paper here. Look towards the end of the section.

SAPA Paradigm for IT Architecture

This blog is intended to give a basic introduction to the SAPA paradigm. SAPA is a new approach to designing, building, and delivering IT systems.

SAPA stands for Simple As Possible Architecture. The driving idea behind the SAPA paradigm is that simplicity reigns supreme. Complexity is the enemy. It drives systems cost, increases system failures, and greatly adds to the lifetime cost of an IT system.

There are a number of stages to building a SAPA. I think of the stages as follows:

Stage 1: Capability Mapping. Here we are trying to understand how the high level business processes that will be supported by the IT system are broken down into simplest possible set of capabilities (groups of business functionality.)

Stage 2: Business Architecture. Here we are taking one of the capabilities identified in Stage 1 and  specifying the the simplest possible implementation of that capability in terms of business processes and dependencies. 

Stage 3: IT Organization. Here we are identifying the simplest possible collection of IT systems necessary to support the business architecture identified in Stage 2 and documenting the dependencies between those systems.

Stage 4: IT Architecture. Here we are designing the simplest possible architecture for each of the IT systems identified in Stage 3.

Stage 5: IT Implementation. Here we are implementing the IT system as simply as possible following the architecture created in Stage 4.

Each of these stages follows the basic SAPA pattern:

• Understand the immediate problem you are tying to solve
• Design the simplest possible solution to that problem.
• Validate that there is no simpler solution.

This common SAPA pattern has a number of implications that cut across stages. First, there must be some way to compare two solutions to see which is the simplest. Second, there must be a  methodology you can use to test a solution to see if it can be simplified. And both of these imply that there must be some rational way of measuring complexity.

My recent work in the SAPA paradigm has focused at stages 1-3. For a good example of my work in these three stages, see my "anti-complexity patent." You can read about it here.

SAPA builds on the paradigms that come before it, especially Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).  But while SOAs are a natural way to realize a SAPA (stages 4-5) SOAs are in no way required for SAPA.

SAPA is a key enabler for many desirable features of IT systems. SAPA systems are easier to test, implement, and make secure. They perform better and are more reliable. They are cheaper to build and easier to maintain.

SAPA has something for everybody. For those interested in business/IT alignment, SAPA systems are highly aligned with the business processes they support. For those interested in cloud deployment, SAPA systems are well designed for life in the cloud. For those interested in Agile development, SAPA systems are a necessary prerequisite to effectively scaling up Agile approaches.

If you care about improving the organization's bottom line through more effective  IT investments, you should care about SAPA.  The reason is simple. As Simple As Possible!

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Defining IT Complexity Terminology

My specialty is understanding how to measure, locate, and eliminate unnecessary IT complexity. One of the difficulties of this field is terminology. You would think that a word like simple would be simple to define. But there is no widespread agreement on what the words related to complexity mean.

So in this blog, I am going to define some of the terminology that is important in IT complexity reduction. I won't claim that these meanings are relevant to all fields, but when I use these words, this is what they will mean. This is my initial pass. I will give examples from my own work, since that is the domain with which I am most familiar.

I invite readers to comment. Soon I will consolidate the discussion into a terminology proposal for www.cuec.info (The Consortium for Untangling Enterprise Complexity.) I assume that better definitions will come out of this discussion.

Simplicity Framework: A simplicity framework is an approach, model, or methodology that seeks to find, measure, and remove complexity from some domain. Any simplicity framework should specify the domain for which it is intended. Example: SIP (Simple Iterative Partitions) is a simplicity framework for IT architecture.

Complexity: Complexity is a measure of an attribute of a system that makes that system difficult to understand, manage, and/or implement. Complexity is measured in some units appropriate for the domain and defined by a simplicity framework. Example: In SIP, complexity is measured in Standard Complexity Units (SCUs).

Solution Set: For some problem P in a given domain, the solution set is the set of all solutions that solve P. Note that a solution set only includes solutions to P. If a proposed solution would not solve P, then it is by definition not a member of the solution set. Example: When considering architectures for an inter-library loan system, we examined dozens of potential candidates from the solution set.

Simple Solution: A simple solution is the element of a solution set that has the least complexity of all elements in the solution set. Note that it is theoretically possible that more than one solution from the solution set share the lowest complexity. In this case, there are multiple simple solutions. Example: People were surprised that the simple solution to the inter-library loan system was not the one initially proposed.

Complex Solution: A complex solution is any of the elements of the solution set that are not the simple solution and whose complexity can be reduced through the simplicity framework. Example: In the inter-library loan system, all of the originally proposed SOA architectures were complex solutions.

Simplistic Solution: A simplistic solution is any proposed solution to a problem that lacks the minimum complexity necessary to solve that problem. By definition a simplistic solution is not a member of the solution set. Example: The catalog system we looked at turned out to be a simplistic solution to the inter-library loan system.

Chaotic Solution: A chaotic solution is a solution that is presumed to solve a problem, but whose complexity is so high that using (or continuing to use it) is not feasible and reducing it is not practical given the simplicity framework. Note that it is not always possible to determine if a chaotic solution is even a member of the solution set. Example: The present inter-library loan system is a chaotic solution.

Do you have any ideas for more terms that should be defined? Do you have issues with these definitions?  Leave comments here or discuss with me on Twitter (@RSessions). And keep an eye on www.cuec.info for efforts to standardize some of these terms.

Planned Version 2 Changes:
@johanlindberg suggested using candidate to describe Simplistic and Chaotic. His argument: Simplistic and Chaotic are by definition not solutions. Good point! He also suggested giving comparison terms to show similar terms in complexity theory and SW development.

@HotFusionMan (Al Chou) suggested adding note about layers of complexity.  I think this is a detail of the simplification framework, but I need to make clear the generic character of these definitions.

Add definitions for simplicity, simplification. Add description of which problem spaces these definitions are appropriate for (those that are striving for simplicity.) Make less specific to IT and general to any situation in which a move from complex to simple is desirable.

Incorporate Nikos's discussion on understandability.

And thanks to @JohnDCook for Twitter contributions!

The Failure of Success

I have written quite a bit about the cost of IT failure, most recently in a white paper. A number of people have criticized my analysis saying that just because a large project "fails" in the sense of being late, over budget, and/or not delivering expected functionality, doesn't mean that the project doesn't deliver value.

This may be true. The real question is this: had the business known how the project would have gone, would they still have agreed to do the project? If the answer to this is yes, then the project was a success. If the answer is no, then the project is a failure.

However even when the project comes in on-time, on-budget, and delivering expected functionality, the project may still not be a  success. These three metrics (budget, time, functionality) tells us little about the project itself and much more about our ability to make predictions about the project.

Take a simple example. The business tells IT they need a system that delivers 100 functions. IT calculates the cost at $100K/function. They tell the business the project will cost $10M and three years to deliver. Business approves the project. IT delivers the project one month early and $1M below budget. The business is happy. IT looks good. The project is a success!

Or is it? All this tells us is that IT did what they said they would do. It doesn't tell us whether what IT said they would do was really reasonable.

In most projects that size, complexity is a major cost factor. If IT and the business take appropriate steps to manage that complexity, the cost/function can be greatly reduced. If a project can be delivered for $9M without complexity management, then it is highly likely that it could have been delivered for $5M with complexity management.

So is this project a success or a failure? According to most pundits (such as Standish) this project is an unqualified success. In my book, it is a $4M failure. This is one more reason I say that looking at the percentage of IT successes is a meaningless statistic. What we need to look at is the percentage of IT budgets that are wasted.