This time it’ll be different. It’s a green field project and you’ve learned from your mistakes. You’re not going to make the same ones again. Fast forward several months and you’re in a mess. A change in one place causes bugs in a completely different place. Adding a simple feature means making changes all over your application. Progress is getting slower and slower. You’re lost in complexity. Why does this keep happening and what can we do about it? This talk will try to answer those questions. I’ll show how complex software really is, define the different types of complexity found in software, explain the issues complexity causes and discuss different techniques we can use to manage it. This talk is suitable for anyone who has worked or will work on a software development project. No development experience is required.