This is the definition of Design Review from Wikipedia:

“A design review is a process whereby a design is tested against its requirements prior to implementation.”

There are at least two problems with this definition:

The first problem is that it says we are going to review “a design.” In other words, there is a single design alternative being presented. In this case, the designer is probably expecting to convince all other participants that he did a good design. At most, he is willing to hear a few comments about how his solution could be possibly improved. It is very unlikely that his design will be rejected, because almost certainly none will be able to suggest a different option.

The participants of a design review should not be expected to imagine alternative solutions. Only if the feature being implemented is very simple it would be possible to propose entire new designs during the review. Any interesting feature requires a considerable amount of effort to obtain a good design. The consequence is that in this “single design” approach the solution being “reviewed” will almost always be approved with minor changes.

Therefore, effective design reviews must include the presentation of several alternatives. The discussion should not be if a particular design satisfies or not the requirements. Correctness is the most fundamental attribute of a solution, so the diverse design choices must differ on some other attributes that can be compared. In other words, each option has its advantages and disadvantages, and by choosing one of them we are actually deciding which attributes are the most important ones, but all options must be correct.

In this “multiple-choice” approach, the goal of the design review is to analyze several alternatives and understand their different implications. Then, if there is a solution that is clearly better than all others, according to some criteria, it should be the chosen one. Otherwise, we should try to look for additional options.

But here is the second problem with the previous definition of design review: It says that the “design is tested against its requirements.” In most cases this means only the functional requirements, the specific demands related to the feature being implemented. This definition assures that the design must be correct, but it does not address the question of how the new feature being implemented will affect the existing system architecture. In other words, this definition does not take in consideration the non-functional requirements.

Diverse design alternatives will probably have very different implications for non-functional requirements, and this should be used as the basis for comparison when selecting one of them.

For example, one design alternative could have the user’s session data stored on memory, while another would store the same data in a database. The first alternative will probably allow all operations to be performed more efficiently, thus reducing latency and increasing throughput. However, the second alternative improves resilience and fault-tolerance, because if a process crashes no data will be lost and it will be possible to restore the user’s session from the database. In this example, the participants in the design review must decide which attributes are more important, and select the best solution accordingly.

In summary, if there are no alternatives, there is no real review being done. This can be best illustrated by a story of Alfred P. Sloan, then CEO of General Motors:

At one meeting of his top executives, Sloan said: “Gentlemen, I take it we all are in complete agreement on the decision we’ve just made.” Everyone nodded.

“Then,” said Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion until our next meeting, to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”

So let’s hope we will have more disagreement in our next design reviews!