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Design by committee (aka, technical design reviews or whatever the hell "crits" means) is one of the most wasteful practices in software development except, pro
by beryilma 3y ago
Design by committee (aka, technical design reviews or whatever the hell "crits" means) is one of the most wasteful practices in software development except, probably, for very junior developers. I always see many technical managers make off-the-cuff remarks about technical designs in those meeting without really understanding what they are saying. And the poor developers feel obligated to address those "issues", which always result in poorer and over engineered solutions.
- madeofpalk 3y agoSounds like those technical managers, and the developers who aren’t able to engage, are the wasteful ones. Design review is just highlighting organisation failures elsewhere. I find the process to be very productive. Just the act of writing out a proposal (or multiple) I find very helpful for better understanding the problem and solutions.
- beryilma 3y ago> Just the act of writing out a proposal... Strongly agree. But this is not the same thing as a tech review. > Design review is just highlighting organisation failures elsewhere. I don't think it is an organizational failure necessarily; it is more of a power balance issue. Most (esp. junior) developers wouldn't dare ignore a VP's comments in a tech review.
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- danielvaughn 3y agoThe eng director at my current company does a good job of mitigating this. He'll often give remarks in our technical docs, but always prefaces it with "this is a bike shedding comment but.." etc etc. Always makes it clear that we're free to ignore his input if he's missing necessary context. Because ultimately eng management must be able to weigh in at points, so we're never going to get rid of that problem. The question is how to do it without wasting IC time.
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