User talk:GGoncalves-WMF/Sandbox:Design Review

On scope of work (also sent to Slack)

Ok, this definitely strengthens the earlier feeling I had about an expanding scope.

So —taking a step back a bit— the original scope of the DPDR was to create a checkpoint in a project's timeline where we (DP) could have a look at what was planned and provide feedback before decisions became entrenched and difficult to undo. However, as that work progressed it became obvious that not every team was doing formalized designs, or were even capable of approaching it with the level of engineering rigor we were looking for. Simply put, they needed help. That is where the elements of the document that deal with preparation come from (they establish expectations), as well as the explicit offer of help. Those aspects though —the early engagement and collaboration— have been the most impactful at addressing the original concerns.

Also worth mentioning here is that I've already been (rightly) called out for overlaps elsewhere. For example, everything relating to performance expectations, SLO, ownership, etc are things that ought to be rolled up somehow. You don't want teams to have to redundantly address these with each stakeholder.

Where I'm going with this is that I think we should consider rolling this work up, and decouple it somewhat from the DPDR. In other words, have separate processes, one for creating a new design and one for the DP review. The latter might not even be necessary (the former might result in architectures that DP isn't even a stakeholder for), or the review might be reduced to a single step on the SRE checklist (which honestly kind of tracks). EEvans (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 31 October 2025 (UTC)