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How to create a good RFC

1. What is an RFC?

An RFC (Request For Comments) is a written collaborative document that describes a piece of work that is going to happen. Generally they are features but they could also be migrations or company strategy changes.

2. Why use RFC’s

  • Better technical decisions because of the collaborative nature (you send it out, you get feedback about it)
  • Documentation of why we do things
  • Informing the whole engineering team of upcoming work
  • If you have an idea, a well written RFC can help delivering this idea
  • They help track choices and the thought behind them over time, which can help other teams make faster decisions in the future - helps stop reinventing the wheel

3. What is NOT an RFC?

  • A long document that you dread writing
  • Something that you write but nobody reads
  • A “process” that you need to slug trough every time you write a new feature

Inspiration