You cannot see the hole in your own design document

Who this is for

• Engineers about to take a design document to a panel.
• Tech leads who review other people’s designs and want the questions first.
• Anyone who needs a decision record that still makes sense in a year.

The problem

• The obvious objection arrives in minute four, when it was findable the day before.
• A review that discovers it in the room costs everyone the afternoon.
• Every decision record omits what was considered and rejected and why.
• That is the one section the next person needs, and the next person is usually you.

What it does about it

• Asks the mechanism question first: does this address the cause or the symptom. If the document never says where the cost goes, nothing else matters.
• Runs eleven lines of attack: the alternative they will name, the simpler version, migration, reversal, scale, the seam.
• Orders by damage: a question that changes the design outranks one that changes a paragraph.
• Treats silence as a finding: a document naming no assumptions has not disposed of them.
• Refuses a premature record: when the core is open it gives you the rejected alternatives and the answers it needs.

Two minutes to first output

1. Paste the pack and the document. Rough is better than polished.
2. Add the panel’s names and what each always asks, if you have them.
3. Answer the blocking questions, then run it again for the record.

What it will not do

• Answer its own blocking questions. It has no author in the loop.
• Assert what you already know. It names where each answer would come from.
• Pre-review a document with no decision in it. It stops and says so.