I get asked to do Design Reviews out of the blue every now and again — and I dread them — primarily because I don’t know what I’m being asked to do or what the end goal is. But somewhere, someone is getting a gold checkmark because they requested a review :)
Conversely, I like getting feedback on my work I’ve done (and have always wondered why this doesn’t extend to Test Cases or other tasks I perform).
So here are my three questions I always ask when undertaking Design Reviews.
What are you reviewing?
Design Reviews are different than Code Reviews and a bit more fun to do. To me a good design review can replace the need for one-off code reviews down the line because you get to discuss the solution as a whole —
- Why are going down this path?
- What systems are you connecting to?
- What are you doing for error handling?
- How does one troubleshoot issues?
- When do redundancy and failover enter the equation?
- What tools/libraries are you looking to use?
These are the questions that help set the direction and help me know where you are looking for my feedback (mainly so I don’t overstep).
