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How do you write design docs? Did you have to go through a course establishing some fundamentals to it? Did you take a writing class? Do you use specific tools?
by Sacho 10y ago
How do you write design docs? Did you have to go through a course establishing some fundamentals to it? Did you take a writing class? Do you use specific tools? I would like to try and adopt this style of communication but everyone in my team, including me, are writing illiterates and I wouldn't even know where to start.
- fdsfsaa 10y agoI find the "five questions" approach helpful. The classic questions are "Who?", "What?", "Where?", "When?", and "Why?". If you answer those questions (probably best to start with "What?") and additionally address foreseeable questions and objections (e.g., "Why do you want to use Foo instead of Bar?" "Bar doesn't work on Spam data."), you have a good design document.
- euyyn 10y agoWe don't really have a class: Like any writing, you just need to be aware of what's your goal. For a design doc, you want to say three things: (1) what are yo doing/planning to do, (2) why, and (3) what alternatives you've considered and why do you think they're worse. We just use Google Docs, and it's easy to share the doc and have people add comments or propose changes. There's a template somewhere, but I don't like it much.