Parnas Design Decision Document
This is a Parnas-light design document. Here's a web site that nicely lays out Parnas's document-driven approach to software engineering:
http://www.csis.ul.ie/Research/ParnasLectures
The audience for a decision document is the designers; not design reviewers. The decision document captures a design in progress. It characterizes the process of converging on a design solution and evolves into a rationale for a design. A design solution can be extrapolated from the decisions for review purposes.
Each design issue is listed with comments used to work each issue through to a resolution. The comments may include observations, links to other dependent issues, design options for addressing the issue, the benefits and drawbacks of each option, and a resolution.
Issues that are dependent on others can be deferred. In so doing the order in which issues are addressed is determined. As issues are resolved some dependent issues go away or options are eliminated. This improves the efficiency of the decision making process.
As more design notes are collected major issues may be subdivided into smaller issues. Eventually the document will be detailed enough to serve as a reference for implementation, test case generation, user documentation, and eventually maintenance.