Very good question - I usually develop custom, internal apps that are very data- and option-heavy. A lot of those best practices you read about everywhere are hard to apply when your software is much denser than modern "do-one-thing-well"-apps.

I'd like to see some showcases on how to approach those problems.

One thing I found to work well, is resisting the urge collect all kinds of features in a single screen/page/view - use multiple views instead and keep them clean and simple on their own. Of course this comes at the expense of needing more clicks to reach certain areas, but I prefer that to overwhleming users by putting everything related into one section.

Also, I can't emphasize enough how much consistency matters - particularly if you have a lot views, you should make sure that your users feel right at home in any of them as from their first encounter. Keep similar navigation ideas for example: If all your navigation features a hierarchy like Home -> All Items/List -> Single Item/Detail only the context will change and it will be easy to get used to that.

A project I'm working on currently (not public-facing) is a relatively complex design tool for a manufacturer. One of the tools they were using was quite clunky and was somewhat "option heavy".

What I decided to do (and am glad I did) was condense alot of the "option" stuff into basic gestures or movements. I use the term "gestures" liberally in that this isn't a mobile or tablet app with touchscreen interface. It's a browser-based desktop app where the only real interaction occurs through mouse / keyboard input.

Given that it's a 'design tool' there are probably alot of things about the app that couldn't be transferred to a typical data-driven GUI, but I think having this frame of mind when designing the UI / UX can probably help in alot of unexpected ways.

I think the general takeaway here is that "more options doesn't always mean more buttons" :)

I did some work around that. It's older than the hills (like from 2008)

Are you thinking like this

https://www.behance.net/gallery/822055/LMG-Analytics-Tool

Been writing a little bit on a book about design for enterprise perhaps I should pick it up.

Your work looks great. One thing that I struggle with, that you seem to have an good awareness for, is layout within a 'hierarchy' of controls/views. I look forward to your book.

Thanks. As I said this is older than the hills :) but still holds up IMHO.

Hierarchy of controls is exactly one of those things that are very hard to do because you have to find the balance between easy to use and powerful.

I.e. the more powerful you want you tool to be the more controls you need and thus the complexity rises.

Not the OP, but I'm also interested. The example you provided was right on.