Great article. I spend a lot of my time writing design docs these days. We derive a ton of value from it. The projects I work on are typically collaborations w

Great article. I spend a lot of my time writing design docs these days. We derive a ton of value from it. The projects I work on are typically collaborations with several developers. It is important to all have the same vision for what we are building. A good design doc is a vehicle for a team to sync their mental models of the thing they are building. We also often have many other teams (security, infrastructure, operations, other business units, etc) who all have a stake in what we are doing. A good design doc helps build consensus with them. The review process gives them a voice in calling out concerns. It is much easier to solve a foundational problem before any code is written. One addition that isn't explicitly called out by the article, but I have found very valuable, is the inclusion of references. In my experience, good design docs typically include some references. Links to the docs for a piece of software we want to use, links to an AWS blog post explaining part of the architecture we want to use, links to academic papers explaining the algorithms we want to implement, etc. Good references support the design doc and help readers fill in knowledge gaps they may have.