design doc template: include rollout plan

[karlfloersch]

The design doc template should include a section dedicated to the rollout plan. This will help to make sure that all of the information required for taking a feature to production is clearly documented

[ajsutton]

I can see how this would be useful for some design docs, but it really depends what the point of design docs are. Originally design docs were for getting buy in on some technical design that had cross-team impact. For a lot of those things a roll out plan is just extra stuff to write that's not actually helpful. For other things it can be helpful if they're larger changes.

I get the sense here though that we're trying to shoe horn this into design docs because we do them. Whereas I'd have thought the better place for defining the rollout is to have it in the project plan. Then we define the project and set objectives/goals, identify milestones based primarily on incremental business value (with some consideration of the tech implications but accepting a heap of uncertainty around the tech) and then we start thinking about where design docs fit in. Often the first milestone in the project plan will be a "Work It Out" kind of goal where we do some spikes/research to identify the high level design and mitigate key risks or unknowns which may reveal info that means we adjust the project milestones so there's some back and forth, but generally if you want vertical slices you need to think from the business requirements perspective, not the technical perspective.