I was listening to The Omni Show — How Jorge Arango Uses OmniFocus. It was an overall good episode and at the end Arango shared a reference to Gall’s Law. I had not heard of this before so I looked it up:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

Arango was sharing this in reference to GTD systems — build a simple system that works and then figure out what you need from there. But I keep coming back to this because I think this happens in software and technology frequently.

I’ve been thinking about big enterprise system changes that companies have to make and the huge challenge that you face is really fighting Gall’s Law. These systems are always complex and due to the domain you cannot start simple — you have to start complex.

Gall’s Law is worth keeping in mind.