There should be a stakeholder for simplicity

Usually in every project ideas are abundant. Your client has many ideas what features he wants. You and your coworkers have a rich background in the problem domain and the technologies you use so that solutions are not sparse. But often this experience and confidence leads to abandoning an important trait: simplicity.
Most of the time you are focused on getting good solutions for the problems that arise. From past experiences with clients who could not exactly explain what they really need (which is different from what they want most of the time) you tend to include a little extra flexibility in your system. Maybe you need this and that variation some time in the future but at this very moment it’s a guess at best. And often this guess costs you. You could argue that you are investing into your project. But how many times did this investment really pay off? And how many times did you have a hard time just because you did not want to make restrictions? At first it seems like a little work. But with the next feature you have to continue supporting your little ‘extra’. Over time it infuses your system like leaven does it with bread. In the end it is more work to make it simple than to keep it simple.
So with every project you approach there should be a stakeholder for simplicity. Someone who focusses on simple solutions. Sometimes you have to cut a bit away from the feature or you have to view the problem from a different angle. Some other time you have to dig deeper into the problem domain or you need real data from your users (which is always better than what you can make up in your mind). Finding simple solutions is work but it is much more work to support your over-engineered solutions.