Comparison
Design reviewvsRequest for comments
Design review
you presented the design and spent forty minutes on a question you had not thought to ask yourself.
A scheduled conversation where a design is examined by people who are not building it. Done well it hunts for the assumption nobody stated and the failure mode nobody costed; done badly it is a status meeting with slides, or a place where the most senior voice wins by default. Going in, the useful preparation is not polish but knowing which parts you are least sure about, because those are the only parts worth the room's time.
Full entry →Request for comments
you wrote up the plan and left it open for a week so people could argue in the margins before you built anything.
A proposal circulated for comment before a decision is made, aimed at people who would otherwise be surprised. Unlike a decision record it is a live document with an audience and a deadline, and its main product is often the objections rather than the approval. It is worth distinguishing them clearly: the RFC is the conversation, the ADR is the sentence you write down afterwards.
Full entry →