CHAPTER 4: SYSTEMS

Tug-of-war

Imagine walking into a car dealership and asking for the latest model, albeit one with three inches more leg room, additional trunk release lever and complete rearrangement of dashboard controls to your liking.

When it comes to flexibility, most of us think about:

•  Ease

•  Adaptability

•  Freedom.

Complexity conjures up different images:

•  Difficulty

•  Intricacy

•  Entanglement.

It may appear counterintuitive, but when it comes to systems, tradeoffs between flexibility and complexity happen all the time.

•  Predefined templates for adding vendors or commission plans, for instance, facilitate the ease of adding or making changes to existing standing data, but can add to ongoing maintenance and/or periodic ...

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