I am preparing a memoir about "Why do (some) IT projects become too complex and how to avoid it ?".
If you have ever encountered projects having complex codes or were hard to maintain, how did you manage to go through it?
If you have to choose between several applications to use in your project, what would be your top priority in their functionality and why?
Document, Document, Document!
I work with some pretty complex MVC code, and am only now actually understanding how it works, as opposed to accepting it on faith. Whenever I make a change that I have a hard time figuring out, I put a comment in the code at that section to help clarify what is happening. It might not have helped me since it wasn't there, but it'll help the next person around. I also like to ask other programmers around me to look at my changes to see if they are clear.
My company has an internal wiki that we use for documenting a lot of the meta tasks we do, like virtual server problems, common queries, etc. Whenever I come across something I've not done before but will have to do often, I check to see if there's a wiki on it. If there isn't I'll make one. More people have gotten involved in it as well recently, so I hope it will grow faster. I think it really helps communication of the more mundane tasks we have.
I don't think you can ever completely avoid complexity over time, but there are ways to mitigate it:
All of this is somewhat dependent on what the project actually entails. Sometimes, for example, it'll be beneficial to accept complexity in exchange for performance. Not all complex code is necessarily a bad thing. In general, though, I think following these guidelines should help.
Also, resist the temptation to add quick hacks because the code is complex/bad/hacky already. In my experience you'll end up with exponential more complexity.
technical debt
refactor to eliminate
business changes
adapt and expunge
tool changes
new tools, same old architecture = impedence mismatch
