While thinking about Toyota Way it is hard not realize that many of principles that driven this company success are not really something new. They were “alive” for many centuries - since mankind ever tried to conduct any bigger project. One of them is simplicity – in Toyota there is no place for bureaucratic, overblown mindset.

Recently I stumbled upon Occam’s Razor law, also known as Latin expression Lex parsimoniae. It is one of those rules of thumbs that driven many outstanding minds of few last centuries (including Albert Einstein, Leonhard Euler, Isaac Newton).

The Principle of Plurality - Plurality should not be posited without necessity
The Principle of Parsimony - It is pointless to do with more what is done with less

Although they seem obvious, The Principle of Parsimony is something that can be really taken into hearts of many software developers. Creating overblown solutions just to shoot “the fly” is a common problem – and if you have a problem first step is to admit it ;-)

First sin is to create architecture way to complex for current project. Do we really need DDD in simple web app ? Maybe Unit Of Work pattern with conjunction of Linq To Sql is enough ?

Another problem is adding features that seem “necessary”, but in the end our client is never going to use them because from his perspective they are useless. This subject is mostly covered with Agile movement, but still it is a quite common behavior among software developers.

I truly believe that this law is really accurate in almost every aspect of developer’s life – e.g. documentation should be concise, and should cover generalities without getting lost in details.