Harvey Saying #12 – Keep It Simple

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In the system business and consulting we have a great tendency to talk in jargon and acronyms.  Harvey really encouraged us all to avoid jargon and abbreviations.  In the systems business, many words mean different things depending on you point of view.  Thus using a particular word may fail in its attempt to communicate meaning.  Take a little more effort and express things more simply. Harvey would say "I am a simple man so express it in simple terms for me".  Early on that would annoy me because Harvey was far from a simple man but he was making a point.  An example of problems with words is "software", that could mean anything from everything that is not hardware to a specific part of the code in a computer and anything in between.  Application is another meaningless word. 

Thus if we are trying to communicate, avoid shortcuts and keep it simple.  Another one for Graham is "ETL" versus "ELT" or is "TLE" or "LET".  None of those mean a hill of beans to me without thinking about it for several minutes.  By that time, we are on to another subject.   "KEEP IT SIMPLE"

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