"It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.", Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

Today, we are going to discuss about a subject you already know (I hope so!)

Less is More

First, a bit of culture.

This motto was first written by Robert Browning in his poetry collection : Men and Women.

The architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe used this in his creations to "describe his aesthetic tactic of arranging the numerous necessary components of a building to create an impression of extreme simplicity, by enlisting every element and detail to serve multiple visual and functional purposes." (Wikipedia, Minimalism)

Yeah, good, but seriously, what is the relation with my projects?

If you are a developer, you already know this motto behind two principles :

• Don't Repeat Yourself
• Keep It Simple, Stupid

But Less is More applies to a more global view too : It has been transposed to project management and been defined as a principal key to successful web applications.

Fred Wilson, in is talk conference at Future of Web Apps, described 10 golden principles of successful web apps (Slideshow here).

(You really should watch this video, or at least, read the transcript.)

"Less is more" appears at the fourth principle and Fred Wilson compare it as simplicity, Minimalism.

You should start simple, by defining three most important key of your application, because these three keys will cover 80% of your users need.

Doing so, your project will have a better global vision and will require less effort to be finished and released (on time!).

Moreover, not implementing everything from the beginning will allow you to add new features over time, one by one, and this will be seen from your users as a very active company that take care of its projects and listen to their community.

Take Google for example, they permanently add new features at their search engine very often, even yesterday!

You must see this as improvement, not as missing piece.

Every major companies did this, like Google, but also Facebook, Delicious, etc.
And you, do you apply this principle on your projects?