Ask Slashdot: On Good Software Design Processes

Marko Rauhamaa asks: "I'm a software manager in a medium-size technology company. Today I ran into a professional argument with my superiors about our company's software design process, which, I suppose, is fairly standard: The software team is to write one or more MS Word documents that have predefined section headings. The documents should describe all aspects of the coding phase that is about to begin. Then the documents are peer-reviewed, polished and submitted under document control. Questions: What kind of design process do the successful free-software projects have (Linux, gcc, Apache, XFree86, etc)? In your experience, how often are design documents revisited after the project? Have design documents helped in technology transfers (that is, have they been more helpful than the source code alone)? Are engineers good at writing design documents? Have you been able to read design documents written by other engineers? Have old design documents been kept up to date with the changes in the implementation? Has the quality of your products been better because of design documentation?"