Writing design docs is overhead. At the center of the decision to create a design document lies whether the solution to the design problem is ambiguous – because of problem complexity or solution complexity, or both. If it is not, then there is little value in going through the process of writing a design doc. A clear indicator that a doc might not be necessary are design docs that are really _implementation manuals_. If a doc basically says “This is how we are going to implement it” without going into trade-offs, alternatives, and explaining decision making (or if the solution is so obvious as to mean there were no trade-offs), then it would probably have been a better idea to write the actual program right away. For a structure of design documents, refer to the [Design Doc Template](Design%20Doc.md). ### References - [Design Docs at Google](https://www.industrialempathy.com/posts/design-docs-at-google) - [How to Write Better with The Why, What, How Framework](https://eugeneyan.com/writing/writing-docs-why-what-how/)