Some of this is frustrating to read. Architectural and detailed design decisions should be made and approved almost entirely before the coding of those features

Some of this is frustrating to read. Architectural and detailed design decisions should be made and approved almost entirely before the coding of those features is started. (Obviously this is the ideal and not always possible). This means that the code reviews should involve little more that a checklist of those approved design decisions against their implementation, perhaps a code style is verified as well. Coding without a design is just hacking, which I believe is the primary cause of burn-out and should be avoided as much as possible. So, the question is, do you have a design document? I know it doesn't sound very agile, but traditional engineering procedures, when managed well, have a lot of merit in controlling product quality and cost.