Software Architect's Handbook

Active design review (ADR)

An active design review (ADR) is most suited for architecture designs that are in progress. This type of architecture review is more focused on reviewing individual sections of the architecture at a time, rather than performing a general review. The process involves identifying design issues and other faults with the architecture so that they may be corrected as quickly and early in the overall design process as possible.

One of the main premises of ADR is that there is too much information involved with reviewing an entire architecture at once and not enough time to do it properly. Many reviewers may not be familiar with the goals and details of every part of the design. As a result, no single part of the design ...