Gall‘s Law: The Crucial Principle for Startup and Software Success

As a seasoned full-stack developer and startup founder, I‘ve come to appreciate one principle above all others: simplicity is the key to building systems that last.

This isn‘t just folk wisdom – it‘s a law of nature known as Gall‘s Law. Coined by John Gall in his book Systemantics, the law states:

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system."

In other words, the most robust and successful systems are not those that start out complex, but rather those that begin with a simple core and gradually evolve.

This insight has profound implications not just for software engineering but for startups writ large. As a founder, your job is to design an organization that can succeed and endure, not just a codebase. By embracing Gall‘s Law from the outset, you can avoid the pitfalls that doom so many startups to failure.

The Power of Simplicity in Software

As any experienced programmer knows, fighting complexity is a daily struggle. It‘s all too easy for even the best-intentioned codebases to become mired in dependency hell, Byzantine architectures, and leaky abstractions.

Gall‘s Law reminds us that overcomplicating things is folly. The most reliable systems are those with simple, modular components that are easy to understand and modify. Complexity should only be added reluctantly as requirements evolve, never for its own sake.

Consider this real-world example. At my last startup, our billing system started out as a simple script that ran once a month. As our business grew, we kept adding more and more logic to handle edge cases, new pricing tiers, discounts, and so on.

Before long, our billing code had turned into a tangled web of if/else statements and magic numbers that nobody fully understood. Bugs were rampant, and making changes was a nightmare. We had fallen into the trap Gall warned about – trying to build a complex system from scratch that collapsed under its own weight.

In hindsight, we should have rewritten the billing system from the ground up once it reached a certain level of complexity. Starting over with a clean, simple implementation would have saved us countless hours of debugging and maintenance down the line.

The High Cost of Complexity

Sadly, our billing system fiasco was not an isolated incident. Engineers at all levels of experience routinely underestimate the dangers of unnecessary complexity.

Complexity makes software harder to understand, harder to modify, and more prone to bugs and performance issues. The more complex a system becomes, the more time you have to spend just keeping the lights on rather than adding new features or improving existing ones.

What‘s true in code is also true for companies. Startups that succumb to complexity pay a steep price in terms of agility, efficiency, and employee morale. The more convoluted your organization becomes, the less adaptable it is to change and the more talent you hemorrhage to burnout.

The statistics paint a grim picture. According to CB Insights, the top reason startups fail is a lack of product-market fit. However, the next most common culprits are all complexity-related: running out of cash, flawed business models, and inadequate teams.

In my experience, these issues are often downstream effects of premature scaling and overcomplication. When you build too much too soon without validating your assumptions, you inevitably waste resources on the wrong things. You end up with a Rube Goldberg machine instead of a product anyone actually wants.

Fighting Complexity with Agile and DevOps

So how can startups inoculate themselves against complexity? Two of the most effective countermeasures are Agile development and DevOps.

At their core, Agile methods like Scrum and Kanban are about managing complexity through incremental delivery and tight feedback loops. Rather than trying to build the whole system at once, you work in short sprints to deliver small pieces of functionality and gather data on what works and what doesn‘t.

This iterative approach aligns perfectly with Gall‘s Law. By starting with something simple and gradually evolving it based on empirical results, you can steer clear of the complexity trap. You avoid premature optimization and are more likely to converge on a product that actually solves customer needs.

DevOps takes this one step further by extending Agile principles to the entire software lifecycle. The core idea is to break down silos between development and operations to enable faster, more reliable releases. Practices like continuous integration, automated testing, and infrastructure as code help manage complexity at scale.

When done right, DevOps allows startups to rapidly experiment and scale without sacrificing stability or security. You can make small, frequent changes to production with confidence, roll back easily if something goes wrong, and maintain a fast pace of innovation without overloading your team.

Embracing Simplicity as a Competitive Advantage

Beyond specific methodologies, the key to conquering complexity is to make simplicity an integral part of your startup‘s culture and values. Everyone from the CEO to the summer intern should see reducing complexity as part of their job description.

This requires more than just paying lip service to simplicity. You have to operationalize it in your company‘s processes and incentive structures. Give teams autonomy to prioritize simplicity over arbitrary deadlines. Reward people for eliminating unnecessary steps or automating toil. Make simplicity a key metric in performance reviews.

Above all, remember that simplicity is not just an engineering concern – it‘s a business imperative. In a world where speed and agility are the ultimate competitive advantages, the startups that win will be those that can maintain simplicity in the face of rapid growth and change.

As Amazon CTO Werner Vogels put it:

"Everything fails, all the time. Designing complex systems with this mindset from the beginning is key to success…It is not sufficient to simply buy bigger servers and storage devices, you need to design your software such that it keeps working when these bigger servers fail."

The Enduring Wisdom of Gall‘s Law

Fifty years after its publication, Gall‘s Law is more relevant than ever. In an era of exponential change and disruption, the ability to evolve complex systems from simple components is the quintessential meta-skill.

While the specific tools and techniques may change, the core insight remains the same: success comes not from grand plans and ivory tower architectures, but from humble incrementalism and a ruthless focus on simplicity.

For startup founders and developers alike, this means resisting the siren song of complexity at every turn. It means starting small, validating often, and iterating based on feedback. It means building organizations that are optimized for agility and adaptability, not rigid adherence to a master plan.

Above all, it means recognizing that simplicity is not just a nice-to-have but an absolute necessity for long-term success. In the words of Alan Kay, the visionary computer scientist who invented object-oriented programming:

"Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible."

Words to live by for anyone who wants to build systems that stand the test of time.