It sounds like you have some experience dealing with some serious bureaucratic red tape manifesting itself in design doc's. I don't know if design documents ne

It sounds like you have some experience dealing with some serious bureaucratic red tape manifesting itself in design doc's. I don't know if design documents need to be a huge thing with stakeholder sign off and approval processes necessarily - maybe when you're google size. At my (small) company, we use something similar (we simply call them spec's) and it's more of a way to express your concept than it is to get sign off. Sometimes just spelling out an idea helps you validate it. Really, you should be able to defend a certain amount of criticism if you're writing code that someone (and probably not you, eventually) will have to maintain. Bad changes can be backed out if caught early, but if left they find ways to creep into other areas and cement themselves when they are built upon. I don't disagree with your main point though, but I do believe there is a balance.