1 Abstract
Every product at Simple and Fast has a customer. The process for delivering a product must then start with the manual, an external specification of the product which describes and prescribes every detail of what the customer will see. This manual is the chief product of the architect, the sole mind whose brainchild is the product.
Since we operate with common data protocols, common interfaces and common specifications, our policy is one of rapid evolution: a new product is made and the old one retired when the old architect is no longer in charge. Maintenance cycle times are thereby reduced to the active lifespan of the product, while the specifications of the procotol or interface that the customer needed is folded into a new product with a new architect.
2 Conceptual integrity
Simplicity and straightforwardness proceed from conceptual integrity. Every part must reflect the same philosophies and the same balancing of desiderata. Every part must even use the same techniques in syntax and analogous notions in semantics. Ease of use, then, dictates unity of design, conceptual integrity.
Because ease of use is the purpose, this ratio of function to conceptual complexity is the ultimate test of system design. Neither function alone nor simplicity alone defines a good design.