I once had a senior leader reject a presentation I wanted to give because it involved me making a case that we shouldn’t build a major component. That makes sharing the following insight all the more cathartic.

Its easy for software to do too much, but:

• It is best to do nothing at all.
• If you have to do something, do something once.
• If you have to do something more than once, try to do it as few times as possible.
• If you have to do something more than once, it is better to do it exactly the same way each time.
• If you have to do something different more than once, it is better to break up that something into parts, and consider each part as its own something.