[Project Name] Design Document - Design Document Template

This template combines the Google design doc philosophy (Malte Ubl / Industrial Empathy) with Amazon-style operational readiness rigor, I've extended for DORA and observability metrics and Alarms. Key principles: Design doc = trade-offs document, NOT implementation manual. If there are no trade-offs, skip the doc and write code.

Every external call needs: timeout, retry strategy, circuit breaker, and fallback behavior defined BEFORE coding. Every alarm must have a runbook. No alarm without action = noise. Alert fatigue kills reliability. Dashboards exist BEFORE launch, not after the first incident. Capacity planning is not optional. Size for 12-month projection + peak multiplier. DORA metrics are leading indicators. Track from Day 1, review weekly. Sweet spot: 15–25 pages. If longer, split into sub-designs. Sections 5–8 (Resilience, Observability, Testing, DORA) are your operational readiness checklist.

Download the template from below url. https://www.rajamohanjabbala.com/templates