Design Questions

“Pathfinding takes longer than path following. Discussions lead to changes in spec. Dependencies always add time.” — Seth Godin

• What is the effort to implement the feature?
  • Design, development, testing, deployment, ongoing maintenance
• How risky is the feature to implement?
• Are there other options not being considered? Why are they not viable?
• How is the feature going to be supported once it’s live?
  • Is there monitoring?
  • Is there sufficient documentation for someone to fix issues that arise?
• How much tech debt will we accrue by implementing the feature as designed?
  • Will the developers be groveling in a month because “the code is a mess”?
  • Is the accrual of this tech debt acceptable?
• Has this been done before, either by this team or anyone? Has it been partially done before?
• What’s more important? Speed or quality?