Are design reviews useful once the code has been completed?

Question

What is the point of reviewing a design document once the code is written? Hasn't the horse already left the barn? It seems to me that the design review should be skipped and more time spent on vetting the code.

Answer 1

Depends on your SDLC, if using waterfall, then yes, design review is absolutely neccessary; since there is much more upfront design/review than more agile approaches.

Answer 2

I agree. The only counter-argument I can see is that the design document provides a form of high-level documentation. If the code self-documents well enough and will be available to anyone who needs a technical understanding, then a design document might be moot.

Answer 3

It is useful should you wish to draw conclusions for future projects. Also, if it will be used as a reference for documenting the system (think future application changes).

Answer 4

Yes, it could be a source of reference for future similar projects.

Answer 5

I just don't see the purpose of this. If the code has already been written and tested...it seems like making changes to the document is wasting time that could be used on things like additional unit tests or working on integration issues.

The purpose of the design docs and reviews are to dictate the structure of the code and how it should look. This is a text book definition of the horse leaving the barn

Answer 6

Ideally, the documents should mirror the code. If everything has been coded, then this is good. If you are doing iterative development, you will want to re-evaluate the project, and can modify the documents.

After the documents are modified, you will change the code to match the new requirements.

The benefit of a living design document is that non-programmers can assist in design and also it is a guideline for the code. A design review can happen at any time the requirements need to change in order to meet the business needs.

Change should always be factored in to any work flow, if you say things can't change then you aren't being responsive to your business objectives, and in turn, your customers.

Answer 7

Design reviews are useful no matter what the "lifecycle pattern" followed is (or was), even if they are after-the-fact. The biggest difference is that an "after-the-fact" review (also called a post-mortem review) is used to learn what worked and didn't work in the project, what would be changed, etc.