The KISS Principle in Project Management: What, Why and How
Publié le 9 May 2022
As a project manager you should make sure that your organization runs as efficiently as possible by utilizing the KISS principle in project management.
Coined by Clarence Johnson, a renowned Aeronautical Engineer, the KISS principle stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
Now, you might think – What makes this term so special that it has guided the project management processes across the globe for more than five decades now?
This is because the KISS principle in project management aims at one major characteristic that is easy to understand but hard to deliver: simplicity.
Whether it is a writer, a developer, or a manager, everybody has a different understanding and perception of simplicity when it comes to organizational process management. This subjective perception leads to inconsistencies and complexities in an organization.
You might ask – How?
Below, we explore the answer to this question and discuss the KISS principle in detail.
What Does the Acronym KISS Stand For?
As mentioned above, KISS or K.I.S.S. stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
Clarence, who coined the term, worked at Lockheed Martin (US-based aerospace, defense, information security corporation) on fighter jets and used the KISS methodology to guide his teammates in their design process. He said that no matter how sophisticated their fighter jets are, they are maintained and repaired by average mechanics with simple tools, and the development process must always keep this in mind.
And, thus came the guiding principle that has kept steering processes and business undertakings across the globe towards successful completion.
The KISS principle in project management suggests that making business processes unnecessarily complicated will just create troubles and affect work quality. So, if your project development process is not simplified, it will trigger a snowball effect in all subsequent areas, thereby increasing the complexity along the way.
We can better understand the KISS principle in project management with an example.
Suppose you are manually managing a cross-border logistics project that has a lot of modules, such as tracking, shipment monitoring, invoicing, last-mile deliveries, and more.
With no proper charts or timeline management solutions available, you will not be able to:
- Delegate the tasks properly
- Manage the project development
- Check for resource availability and task deadlocks or dependencies
- Convey the project progress to the client
- Ensure timely delivery
On-paper management of tasks will only add to the overall project complexity that would become more and more critical as time passes and your project development advances.
The KISS principle would guide you in choosing the right development process, tools, and infrastructure, such as project management software that can help you manage, monitor, assign, track and complete all the small tasks in the development process.
You can instantly visualize whether a project can get delayed with the current pace of development or what needs to be done to remedy a situation, such as an employee quitting the job in the middle of a project.
Take a look at the following image for a better understanding:
You can also utilize the KISS method when it comes to modules or wireframe design by planning everything around simplicity.
For example, if you are designing a shipment tracking module, you would plan the design keeping the “ease of use” instead of code sophistication in mind.
Next, we explore the KISS principle in project management at length for a better understanding.
What Is KISS Principle in Project Management?
Leveraging the KISS principle in project management means keeping everything simple – from project plans to processes and modules to project development philosophy.
Having a complicated project environment and resulting work culture is nothing short of a nightmare as every project development stakeholder can get confused in terms of requirements, design, usability, staffing, and other factors.
The “Keep It Simple, Stupid” methodology can simplify the project development process in the following ways:
- Limiting Cross-Functionality in One Delivery
Right from clean coding practices to project development methodologies, industry experts keep on stressing about limiting the cross-functionality in one function or module. This would mean that you must avoid accomplishing more than one thing or task via one function.
If you try to do more than one task via one function or one module, then it can increase the functional complexity as well as affect the overall readability of the code.
By keeping things simple right from the coding stage, you can ensure that the program’s testing, debugging, and maintenance stay easy and simple, leading to a more effective and less stressful development process..
This is because you can easily trace the errors and bugs as only one function is responsible for one task.
- How Much Detail Is Too Much Detail?
When we say that the KISS methodology focuses on simplicity, we do not explicitly mean excessive detailing or over-simplified project development workflows.
Let us reconsider the logistics project we mentioned above. If you keep on creating an excessively detailed plan, the developers will not be able to leverage the code abstraction and code reuse functionalities just to have a simplified development.
Now, this will not only impede the project progress but will also impact the testing process, as the testers have to go through an over-detailed code that takes extra time for testing and debugging.
- Too Many People on One Task
Software projects with large scope have a huge amount of work that can consume every resource (employee to machine). Further, proceeding without breaking down the project into subsystems and modules, can reduce workplace efficiency and affect proper management.
The KISS principle will guide the project managers to break down the entire project into smaller workable units that are independent of each other and can be developed simultaneously without any process or resource deadlocks.
Hence, you can unlock better task efficiency and granular management control over the development of multiple projects at one time effortlessly and seamlessly.
Let us move on to explore how to implement it in project management.
How to Implement Kiss Principle in Project Management?
You can implement the KISS principle in many ways and at many stages of project development. There is no fixed rule book to follow because every project comes with a different set of requirements and requires a different approach.
However, by following the pointers mentioned below, you can learn the various ways to implement the KISS principle in project management.
- Create and Follow a Clean Coding Guide
Here’s an example: the client requirements change over the course of project development, which can lead to many code components, such as variables, functions, and classes that are no longer required. This is also called “Dead Code”.
If you keep on having the dead code in your project, it can lead to:
- Confusion in the developer team while they are working on the codebase
- Poor code that is not maintainable and is taking lots of time to be refined
- Poor code readability over time
Hence, you need to remove the code segments or portions that are no longer required and must be deleted to maintain the code brevity.
Similarly, the global states and variables with global behavior are unreliable because if anyone changes them or someone with malicious intent gets access to them, your code stops making sense. This can also spur many serious ramifications in terms of code security.
The global state also breaks encapsulation as any function or user has to go through its user class to access it.
The best way to avoid a global state is to use factory classes at the highest level of programs or apps such that everything below the topmost level is based on dependencies involved.
- Avoid Using Multiple Third-Party Tools
Using multiple third-party tools for collaboration, communication, file sharing, and other tasks, can lead to confusion and time wastage because of consistent switching between them.
Therefore, it’s a wise decision to invest in a smart, versatile, intuitive, and feature-rich task management tool that can help you accomplish most of your management tasks.
This also reduces time spent in collaboration, as you can create groups with relevant team members and all of them stay on the same page for every task.
- Streamline Your Review Process
Endless reviewing eats away at your productivity and workplace efficiency. Hence, it is important to ensure that your review and feedback process is well-defined, streamlined, and has a clear-cut workflow to be followed for every task.
Investing in tools that offer workflow creation and making your work breakdown structures more optimized can help you reduce the approval times.
When you spend less time in reviews and micro-management, you are able to complete more tasks in a lesser amount of time.
Next, we discuss the various benefits of using the KISS principle in project management.
Benefits of KISS Principle in Project Management
Using the KISS principle consistently offers a number of benefits and makes your project management process better and more streamlined.
Below, we discuss some of the most crucial benefits of KISS-based project management.
- Emphasis Is on Tasks
When your processes are simple, your teams don’t have to spend a lot of time brainstorming, planning, collaborating, or getting approvals in order to be effective. You just have to ensure that the tasks are completed as per the preset deadlines and that no situations affect the project progress.
- Elevated Levels of Customer Satisfaction
When you use the KISS principle, you work keeping the ease of use in mind. So, any new technology or platform you use, or any project-related thing you do, your focus is always on the end-user or your customers.
Hence, you are able to unlock higher levels of customer satisfaction, and it becomes a part of the culture for your organization.
- Fewer Complexities
Using the KISS method will allow you to set well-defined project roles for every stakeholder. Be it a manager, a developer, a tester, or a designer – all of them know “what needs to be done and by when.”
Hence, there is no confusion regarding the project responsibilities, and there is no way improper delegation can affect the overall project progress.
The Bottom Line
The KISS principle in project management offers a guided approach towards project management by allowing you to avoid unnecessary and cumbersome complexities in processes and management. It also helps you avoid wasting time in over-simplifying the processes, in terms of scope, coding,and more.
With a well-defined and clear work breakdown structure, you can take workplace productivity to a higher level and make the most of your available resources as well.
However, achieving this for complex projects with massive scopes is possible only when you have a proper vision for the entire development cycle.
Hence, we recommend investing in some smart, efficient, and reliable project management software that can help you accomplish your goals of “Keeping It Simple, Stupid!” in an effortless manner.
