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Add 'finding the audience'.
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Also move 'handling feedback'.
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mbrt committed Jul 7, 2024
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62 changes: 40 additions & 22 deletions content/posts/better-design-docs/index.md
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Expand Up @@ -269,6 +269,46 @@ In case formal review and approval is necessary, this can be done during later
iterations, when most of the target audience has already seen and discussed the
contents. This ensures a smoother review.

### Finding the audience

How do you know which reviewers to pick? The most critical decision to make is
to distinguish between reviewers and people that should simply be informed about
the change. The list of reviewers should be minimal, while still being able to
collect quality feedback. Don’t make the mistake of e.g. asking for a review to
the whole engineering org (assuming it’s a big one). Not all readers need to be
reviewers. This extended audience can safely be a lot bigger. If possible, keep
the document open for everyone to read. This improves knowledge sharing and
contributes to a culture of openness.

Yes, but who to pick? This is highly context dependent (not only company, but
team and project wise). In any case, your team is usually a good start. If there
are other teams affected by the proposal, it’s also usually a good idea to
involve them (unless they are too many). In case of doubts don’t hesitate
contacting your tech lead, manager or other leads in the relevant areas. They
should be able to direct you to the actual experts you need.

### Handling feedback

Assuming you picked your audience correctly (i.e. includes experts in the
relevant fields and it’s not too broad), you should expect to get relevant
feedback. We can divide it in three major categories and try to make the best
use of it:

1. Deal-breakers or asks for major changes.
2. Questions.
3. Bike-shedding.

You should treat the first category, major concerns, with major attention. If
the proposal turns out to be infeasible, abandon it. If it can be reworked,
pause the review and do so. Likewise, pay attention to the second category. When
people ask questions and are unsure about what you’re saying, it’s often an
indication that context is missing, or the prose is unclear. Make sure you fix
the text, rework the structure or add glossary and pointers, so that the same
questions don’t pop up again and again. On the contrary, feel free to disregard
comments in the third category (insisting on irrelevant details, or not useful).
You should own the review process. Don’t get dragged into irrelevant
discussions.

## Structure

There's no perfect structure. You'll see that different formats are used or even
Expand All @@ -293,28 +333,6 @@ Note also that this structure will not work for retrospectives, nor project
proposals, where the emphasis is on different points (the past in the former,
the responsibilities and problem analysis in the latter).

## Handling feedback

Assuming you picked your audience correctly (i.e. it’s not too broad and
includes experts in the relevant fields), you should expect to get relevant
feedback. How do you make the best use of it? I would start by dividing it in
three major categories:

1. Deal-breakers or asks for major changes.
2. Questions.
3. Bike-shedding.

You should treat the first category, major concerns, with major attention. If
the proposal turns out to be infeasible, abandon it. If it can be reworked,
pause the review and do so. Likewise, pay attention to the second category. When
people ask questions and are not sure about what you’re saying, it’s usually an
indication that some context is missing, or the prose is unclear. Make sure you
fix the text, rework the structure or add glossary and pointers, so that the
same questions don’t pop up over and over. On the contrary, feel free to
disregard comments in the third category (insisting on irrelevant details, or
not useful). You should own the review process. Don’t get dragged into
irrelevant discussions.

## Alternatives

### Amazon's 6-pager
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