>I think something people need to be aware of is that the engineering culture at places like Google is extremely different than, say, a bank. I have to say tha

>I think something people need to be aware of is that the engineering culture at places like Google is extremely different than, say, a bank. I have to say that this is not uniformly true, I've worked for a few financial institutions, and usually follow some sort of design process before embarking on any sizable work (as mentioned above, I find the RUP process to be a really useful framework). More often that not the design process is usually welcomed because people are happy that someone is willing to create a holistic view of the problem (from stakeholders down to db schema and class diagrams). The process helps with project management, identifies stakeholders and describes the support requirements after transition to prod. Banks actually love somebody to detail all that. In a few cases I'm aware of, my design docs are still referred to years after I've moved on since they capture the most important thing that everybody forgets - basically the 'why' that certain decisions were made, and the alternatives rejected. A good architecture diagram never goes out of date either :)