📘 Part VIII (d) — Execution Artifacts (Design Docs, ADRs, Postmortems, Launch)
SECTION 0 — OUTPUT AT SENIOR LEVEL IS DOCUMENTED DECISION-MAKING
Seniors don’t just ship code.
They ship:
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clarity
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alignment
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reversible decisions
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safe rollouts
Artifacts are how you create leverage.
SECTION 1 — GOLD-STANDARD DESIGN DOC (TEMPLATE)
Include:
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Problem + user impact
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Goals / non-goals
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Constraints
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Proposed solution (with diagrams)
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Alternatives + tradeoffs
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Failure modes
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Observability plan
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Rollout + rollback
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Open questions
SECTION 2 — ADR (ARCHITECTURE DECISION RECORD)
One page:
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Context
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Decision
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Consequences
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Status (proposed/accepted/deprecated)
Senior rule:
ADRs prevent teams from re-litigating old decisions endlessly.
SECTION 3 — INCIDENT POSTMORTEM (TEMPLATE)
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Summary
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Impact
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Timeline
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Root cause
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Contributing factors
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What went well
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What didn’t
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Action items (owners + due dates)
Avoid blame. Optimize learning.
SECTION 4 — LAUNCH CHECKLIST (SAFE SHIP)
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feature flag ready
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dashboards and alerts exist
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rollback plan rehearsed
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load test / capacity check
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security review complete
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on-call aware
SECTION 5 — HOW TO RUN A DESIGN REVIEW
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send doc 24h early
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start with constraints + invariants
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explicitly list tradeoffs
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end with decision + follow-ups
SECTION 6 — HOW TO WRITE AN RFC THAT GETS ADOPTED
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anchor to a real pain
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keep scope tight
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include rollout path
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make adoption incremental