It's just a CONFIGURATION.

Remember "Hick's Law," also known as the Hick-Hyman Law, named after psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman. This principle states that as the number of options available to an individual increases, the time it takes to make a decision also increases. In essence, Hick's Law emphasizes the importance of simplifying choices and eliminating obstacles in the decision-making process.

Have you ever come across the term "configuration" or "configurable feature" in your application? If you're a developer working in a product-based company, chances are you've heard this many times. When introducing new features in a product, it's common practice to make them configurable, allowing you to easily enable or disable them. While making features configurable is a strategic decision, there comes a point where the growing number of configurations can make managing the application overly complex, to the point where controlling them becomes a challenge.

It's true. In many instances, excessive configurations can become a bottleneck for the product. While configurations offer flexibility, too many of them can lead to unnecessary complexity, making the system harder to manage and maintain. Let’s explore a few cases where excessive configurations create challenges:

Development Complexity: As configurations multiply, they can significantly complicate the development process. When developers add more configurable options, the codebase often becomes cluttered with conditional logic to check whether features should be enabled or disabled. This increases the cognitive load for developers, making it harder to write clean, maintainable code.

For new developers or those making changes to an existing product, understanding how different configurations interact can be overwhelming. They need to spend additional time deciphering the impact of various settings on the system’s behavior. If configurations aren't well-documented, it can lead to misinterpretation, causing unintentional side effects in the code.

Another major challenge is unit testing. As the number of configurable options grows, the possible combinations of settings increase exponentially. Developers need to ensure that every combination is tested, which can become a massive undertaking. Covering all possible scenarios is time-consuming, and there's a high chance that some edge cases will be missed, leading to bugs or performance issues later in production.

Additionally, developers must constantly be aware of potential dependencies between configurations. A change in one configuration might affect the behavior of another, creating a web of interdependencies that's hard to manage. This complexity not only slows down development but also makes future changes riskier and more error-prone

Deployment Complexity: Managing excessive configurations during deployment can be a real challenge for implementation teams. It becomes difficult for the team to remember all the product features or the exact configuration keys that need to be enabled or disabled. This often leads to deployment errors, such as missing or incorrect configurations, which can cause features to malfunction or not work as expected.

Moreover, as the number of configurable options increases, the deployment process becomes more prone to mistakes, especially if there’s inadequate documentation. Teams might spend a significant amount of time cross-referencing settings, testing different configurations, and troubleshooting issues that arise from misconfigurations. This added complexity not only slows down deployments but also increases the risk of introducing bugs and inconsistencies between environments. The more configurable options a product has, the harder it becomes to streamline the deployment process, leading to frustration and delays for both developers and operations teams.

Documentation Challenges: When there are too many configuration keys, keeping the documentation clear and concise becomes difficult. The documentation can quickly become overwhelming, with endless lists of options, making it harder for developers and users to understand how the product works.

There's also a higher chance of some configuration keys being undocumented or documented incorrectly, leading to confusion during implementation. Poorly explained keys can create gaps in technical understanding, causing teams to misinterpret or overlook critical settings. Without proper and up-to-date documentation, managing configurations becomes a frustrating and error-prone task.

How to avoid too many configuration and complexity in a product

To avoid the pitfalls of excessive configurations and complexity in a product, here are some best practices you can follow:

Limit Configurability to Key Features: Not every feature needs to be configurable. Focus on making only essential features configurable—those that significantly impact user experience or environment-specific behavior. Keep non-critical features hardcoded or controlled via defaults.

Use Sensible Defaults: Set smart, well-thought-out default configurations. This reduces the need for customization and ensures the product works well out-of-the-box. When defaults are chosen wisely, users and teams have fewer configurations to manage.

Group Related Configurations: Instead of individual configuration flags for each feature, group related settings into a single configuration option. This can simplify management and reduce clutter, making the product easier to maintain and deploy.

Automate Configuration Management: Use automation tools to manage and apply configurations. Centralized configuration management systems (e.g., feature flag services or configuration-as-code tools) can streamline the process, ensuring consistency across environments while reducing manual intervention.

Document Clearly and Concisely: Ensure documentation is concise and well-organized. Group configuration settings logically, provide clear descriptions, and specify the contexts in which they should be used. Regularly update documentation to avoid gaps or outdated information.

Regularly Audit and Refactor Configurations: Periodically review all configurations to identify unused or obsolete ones and remove them. Refactor when necessary to simplify the configuration structure, keeping only what’s relevant and useful.

Modularize Your Code: Break your code into smaller, self-contained modules or microservices. This can reduce the need for configurations since different modules can handle specific functionalities independently, minimizing global settings.

Hide configurations from implementions:

One way to simplify configurations is by segregating them into two categories: static and dynamic. Static configurations are those that rarely need to be changed, such as keys with default values that remain consistent across environments. On the other hand, dynamic configurations are those that vary based on the specific solution sold to the customer.

To reduce complexity for the implementation team, you can hide static configurations during deployment, making them inaccessible. Since dynamic keys are usually fewer than static ones, this approach limits the number of configurations the implementation team needs to handle. By focusing only on the dynamic configurations, the risk of errors or mistakes during deployment is significantly reduced, streamlining the entire process.

Educate the Developers:

This is one of the most critical and challenging aspects that every product company must prioritize. Often, developers introduce new configurations without fully considering their impact, skipping discussions with senior developers or architects. They add new keys without proper understanding, leading to unnecessary complexity. This usually happens due to a lack of structured processes, such as design stages, design reviews, and thorough code reviews.

As a lead developer, it’s your responsibility to oversee every piece of code your team writes, especially when it involves configurations. To ensure best practices are followed, implement a few essential steps:

Ensure that the code aligns with the design document and architectural guidelines.

Verify that all configurations are properly documented, both from a developer's and an operations perspective, so they can be easily understood and maintained.

Perform thorough code reviews before merging any changes. Ensure that all pre-checks, such as design reviews and testing, are completed and documented before the code is merged.

By fostering open communication and ensuring rigorous reviews, you can help your team avoid unnecessary configurations and keep the product architecture clean and manageable.

Common Configuration Mistakes in Code:

Datatype-Specific Keys:

Boolean Values:

One common mistake is using boolean configurations improperly, such as naming them in a confusing way. For example, instead of using EnableFeature1 or EnableFeature2, developers might name them HandleFeature1 or HandleFeature2, which makes it unclear whether the key is meant to enable or disable a feature. Always use clear, self-explanatory names like IsFeature1Enabled to ensure clarity in what the configuration controls.

Integer Values:

Another mistake is when developers use integer-based configurations without properly handling minimum or maximum values. For example, if there’s a configuration for setting connection retries (RetryCount), developers might allow any integer value without capping it, potentially allowing a setting like RetryCount = 1000, which could cause system overloads. Always define and validate limits, such as setting a minimum (RetryCount >= 1) and maximum (RetryCount <= 10).

String-Based Configurations:

String-based

configurations can be error-prone and difficult to manage. For instance, using a string configuration like LogLevel = "DEBUG" introduces the risk of typos ("DEBUUG") or inconsistent values ("debug" vs "DEBUG"). Instead of string-based configurations, it's better to use enums or predefined constants in the code to avoid incorrect values being passed through configurations.

Unnecessary Keys:

One frequent mistake is adding unnecessary configuration keys, such as application paths or directory paths. For example, configurations like AppDirectory = "/usr/local/app" or LogDirectory = "C:/logs" introduce potential for misconfiguration and confusion. Instead, these paths should be fixed at build or runtime, and embedded directly in the code, rather than relying on configuration keys. This reduces clutter and ensures consistency across environments.

Summary

Managing configurations in product-based applications is crucial, yet excessive configurations can complicate development, deployment, and documentation. While configurable features offer flexibility, too many can clutter the codebase and increase cognitive load for developers. This can lead to challenges in understanding how different configurations interact and make unit testing difficult, as developers must account for numerous combinations, risking missed edge cases.

During deployment, implementation teams struggle to remember all necessary configuration keys, increasing the likelihood of errors and misconfigurations. This complexity can slow down deployments and introduce bugs. Furthermore, maintaining clear documentation becomes challenging as the number of configuration keys grows, often leading to gaps or inaccuracies that hinder technical understanding.

To avoid these pitfalls, it’s essential to limit configurability to key features, set sensible defaults, group related configurations, and automate configuration management. Additionally, segregating configurations into static and dynamic categories can simplify processes for implementation teams, reducing the number of keys they handle. Educating developers and ensuring rigorous code reviews are vital in maintaining clean architecture and minimizing unnecessary complexity, ultimately leading to a more manageable and efficient product.

Reference

https://lawsofux.com/hicks-law/