design-review

Design Review

Overview

An SE artifact reviewed by its author finds the problems the author already knows about. An SE artifact reviewed by a meeting finds the problems people notice while reading for approval. A design review that matters finds the problems no single reader would catch — the cross-domain inconsistencies, the unstated assumptions, the failure modes that only emerge when HW, SW, Test, and System perspectives collide.

This skill applies adversarial review methodology to SE artifacts. It materializes four fresh-context reviewers, each biased to disprove through their department's lens, and reconciles their findings into a single actionable report. Run it before the formal design review meeting — so the meeting is about decisions, not discovery.

When to Use

• An SE artifact (requirements document, architecture design, specification) is complete and ready for cross-department distribution
• Before a formal design review meeting — surface issues in advance so the meeting is productive
• When integrating across department boundaries (HW↔SW, power↔thermal, boot↔security)
• After a significant design change that may have ripple effects across modules or domains
• A downstream consumer of the artifact reports that the document is ambiguous, incomplete, or inconsistent
• Preparing for a milestone review (requirements freeze, design freeze, test readiness)

When NOT to use:

• The artifact is an early draft the author has not self-reviewed yet (self-review first, then adversarial review)
• Typos, formatting errors, or mechanical corrections (these do not need four-lens adversarial review)
• The user explicitly wants speed over thoroughness for a low-risk, single-department artifact
• Reviewing implementation code (use a code review process, not this design artifact review)
• Pure information lookup ("does this register address match the datasheet?" — verify directly, don't review)

The Process

SCOPE ──→ LENS-REVIEW ──→ RECONCILE ──→ REPORT
   │           │               │            │
   ▼           ▼               ▼            ▼
 Define    Four parallel    Classify      Produce
 artifact  adversarial      findings      review
 & depth   reviews          by severity   report