About

Battling Complexity is about one idea. Most of what goes wrong in technology comes from complexity we didn't need.

I’m Clif Render. I started out as a developer, became an enterprise architect, and then moved into IT leadership. Today I’m Vice President, Information Technology, and I lead three functions that many companies split among separate executives: IT, information security, and privacy. I’m responsible for the technology, for the data it holds, and for keeping both safe.

Along the way I’ve worked in development, application and solution architecture, enterprise architecture, and executive leadership. I’ve worked with teams, executives, and a lot of vendors. The same pattern shows up everywhere. Complexity creeps in one reasonable decision at a time, and it rarely leaves on its own.

I started the original Battling Complexity blog as an architect, to write down what I was learning about pushing back on that. This is the new version of it.

Why simplicity matters more than ever

As an architect, I saw complexity as a design problem. Now that I’m responsible for IT, security, and privacy all at once, I see the whole bill for it:

• As Head of IT, every system is something to fund, staff, patch, and eventually replace. Complexity is what turns a technology budget into a maintenance budget.
• As Head of Privacy, every copy of personal data is something to account for. Data you can’t map is data you can’t protect, delete, or explain to a regulator.
• As Head of Security, every system, integration, and vendor is part of the attack surface. You can’t secure what you don’t understand, and complicated environments are where attackers hide.

Those three jobs pull in the same direction. A simpler environment is cheaper to run, easier to protect, and easier to keep compliant. I believe in simplicity more now than I ever did as an architect.

Why “Clif’s notes”?

If you studied literature in school, you probably remember CliffsNotes, the yellow-and-black study guides that boiled a long book down to what you needed to know. The posts here aim for the same thing: the short version, the parts that matter, and nothing you don’t need. It seemed like the right format for a blog about simplicity. And with a name like mine, I couldn’t resist.

What you’ll find here

• Engineering. Quality, testing, documentation, and how to build software that’s still easy to change in five years.
• Architecture. How to make technology decisions that serve the business instead of the résumé. That includes picking vendors, picking platforms, and saying no.
• Leadership. The people side of simplicity: incentives, org structure, and why taking things away is often the most useful thing a leader can do.
• Security and privacy. Why a smaller, simpler footprint is the most effective control most organizations aren’t using.

A few of the notes are from the archive. I first published them in 2018, and they’ve held up well enough to bring back. I also keep a reading list of the people whose work on this topic I’ve learned the most from.

A guiding principle

If this site had a manifesto, it would be the one I proposed back in 2018:

Simplicity over Complexity
Design over Features
Quality over Technology
Intuitiveness over Innovation

You can find me on LinkedIn.