KISS Principle

A heuristic to use the simplest solution that meets the actual requirements, considering complexity transferred to other people or systems.

KISS is a design heuristic to keep a solution as simple as its requirements reasonably allow. The important comparison is between alternatives that still do the necessary job. Fewer steps, concepts, or dependencies can ease understanding and maintenance, but eliminating essential controls or cases merely hides complexity elsewhere.

Simplicity does not guarantee adoption or reliability. Ask whose experience becomes simpler and what burden moves to users, maintainers, or another system. The principle works best with explicit requirements and a test of the simplified version, so elegance is judged by usable behavior rather than by a small component count alone.

When to use it

When incremental additions make a process difficult to understand, maintain, or use without corresponding value.

How it can help

Remove unnecessary steps, choices, and dependencies while verifying required behavior and important exceptions.