If you’ve ever slogged through pages of technical jargon and bullet points nobody will remember, you know why most design docs flop. They aren’t just boring—they’re useless. Not because the writers can’t write, but because they’re thinking about the wrong things.
This guide is for engineers, tech leads, and architects who want their design docs to move the project forward—not just check a process box.
A note on inspiration:
This approach owes a debt to Grant Slatton’s “How to Write a Good Design Document”, which nails the fundamentals of design doc clarity. The advice below builds on his framework, shaped by mistakes and lessons from my own experience in the trenches.
Why Design Docs Go Nowhere
After years of watching projects stumble or stall despite “approved” design docs, these are the five failure patterns I see again and again:
- Compliance over conviction: Docs get written because the process says so, not because anyone is fighting for the best solution.
- Ignoring the audience: Authors assume everyone’s already on board, equally informed, and cares as much as they do.
- Dodging hard questions: Tough trade-offs and risks are buried under jargon or skipped entirely.
- Cleverness over clarity: Writers want to look smart, not make the real issues obvious.
- First-draft laziness: The first version gets shipped; nobody cuts, nobody questions what’s essential.
These aren’t writing problems. They’re thinking problems. So here’s how to think differently about writing your next design doc—starting with making the stakes real.
The Design Doc Gut-Check Checklist
1. Make the Stakes Concrete
- [ ] Quantify consequences: Spell out what happens if you do nothing—lost revenue, increased tech debt, user churn, missed deadlines. Put real numbers or examples on the pain.
- [ ] Draw boundaries: Say explicitly what’s out of scope or not being solved.
2. Force Yourself to Surface Risks and Trade-offs
- [ ] List two alternatives and why you’re not choosing them: If you can’t, you’re not thinking hard enough.
- [ ] Call out unknowns and riskiest assumptions: Write down what could break, what you don’t know, and what would cause this plan to fail. Make your discomfort visible—don’t let someone else expose it in review.
3. Preempt Objections—Before Anyone Else Can
- [ ] Write down the three hardest questions you expect in review, and answer them in the doc: Don’t wait for someone to grill you in the meeting.
- [ ] Assume every reviewer is skeptical: If you were in a rival team’s shoes, would you buy this argument?
4. Ruthlessly Cut and Clarify
- [ ] Trim 30% from your first draft: If you can’t, ask yourself which section you’d defend in a five-minute elevator pitch—and cut the rest.
- [ ] One idea per paragraph, one sentence summary: If a paragraph can’t be compressed to a single, clear sentence, rewrite it.
- [ ] Put calculations, benchmarks, and technical specs in an appendix: Keep your main argument uncluttered and easy to follow.
5. Finish with Commitment and Clarity
- [ ] Be explicit about next steps, owners, and triggers for a redesign: Don’t end on a shrug—define accountability.
- [ ] Define success and failure with a metric, timeline, or scenario: No hedging.
- [ ] Test it on someone who wasn’t in the planning meetings: If they don’t get it, neither will your reviewers.
From Experience
I’ve watched launches stall for weeks because a design doc assumed everyone would “just know” about a scaling bottleneck. Nobody called it out directly, so when things failed in QA, everyone acted surprised. If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist.
On the other hand, the strongest docs I’ve seen say: “Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t, and here’s how we’ll handle it if we’re wrong.” They made people nervous in review—but those nerves forced the right conversations and saved months down the line.
The Real Test
Write the doc you’d want to inherit from someone else—when the deadlines are real, the system is groaning, and all the easy assumptions have disappeared. If your design doc doesn’t make you a little uncomfortable to write, it won’t be compelling to read.
Major credit to Grant Slatton’s original article, which covers the mechanics with clarity and precision. This checklist aims to push those fundamentals further, turning them into habits you’ll actually use when it matters.