System design reviews: the questions we get asked most

The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. The questions about system design reviews that come up most often on our calls.

The right architecture for a team of three is the wrong one for a team of thirty, and vice versa. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Do we need to care about this?

An hour of review before the build saves weeks of rework. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it.

How do we know it is working?

Invite the person who will be on call for it. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

How to tell if yours is fine

Architecture is the set of decisions that are expensive to reverse, which is the only reason they deserve the name. Three things worth confirming about system design reviews before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Write the design down — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.