Design Document

Design docs

• Clément Mihailescu - What Is A Design Doc In Software Engineering? (full example)
• TechLead - What is a Design Doc: Software Engineering Best Practice #1

Content to Include

• Summary

• Motivation: why?

• Screenshots

• Preferred choice

• Design alternatives
  • pros and cons

• Other considerations (experiments to set up, references)

• After launch, explain which was implemented and results.

Benefits of Design Docs

• Design docs help future people working on the project. Rather than having them sweep through the code and trying to understand it, they can just read the design doc to explain everything
• helps summarize accomplishments. It creates a story that people can understand what you are doing. It makes it easier for managers to understand.
• rather than people asking you how it works, just point them to the doc. Tell them to read that first. This will save you personal time.
• saves time because approvers of your code need to understand.
• it makes sure everyone is on the same page. If others are arguing about the designa and started implementing another design, you can use the design doc to protect you. Just point to the design doc and say that this was the design that everyone agreed on

Journal

• 2020-08-14 Initial notes
• 2020-12-20 Created file
• 2021-03-09 Updated Styling