At Sun we didn't use design docs for this. We used architecture docs instead. These were of the form of PSARC cases with materials such as: - interfaces list

At Sun we didn't use design docs for this. We used architecture docs instead. These were of the form of PSARC cases with materials such as: - interfaces lists, with attached commitment levels - interface contracts where interface commitment levels do not otherwise allow teams A, B, and C to use each other's interfaces. That's much better than design docs. The difference between architecture and design -at Sun anyway- was this: - architecture is only about interfaces - design is about details like algorithms