Running a design review: comment period, named decider and a recorded disposition

Goal

Get a written technical proposal decided within a known time, with the decision and its reasons recorded, without either rubber-stamping or endless discussion. This covers the process around a document; writing the document itself is covered elsewhere.

Prerequisites

A proposal in a shared, commentable place with a problem statement, alternatives and open questions; a team agreement on who decides for which area; and a decision log (ADRs or equivalent).

Steps

1. Name the decider when the proposal is opened: one person for the area, or a small named group. PEP 1 does this with a PEP-Delegate recorded in the document header, who has the authority to approve or reject that PEP; the Rust process assigns the relevant sub-team.
2. Announce the comment period with an end date (a week, for example; the Rust process gives its final comment period ten calendar days) and the list of people whose review is required as opposed to welcome.
3. Reviewers comment on the document, not in chat; the author answers every substantive thread with a change or a reason. Threads that turn into design work are moved into the proposal's "unresolved questions" section.
4. When the trade-offs have been aired, the decider calls a final comment period: a short, announced window in which anyone can raise a last objection. The Rust README describes this as a "motion for final comment period" (FCP) together with a proposed disposition of merge, close or postpone.
5. At the end of the window the decider records the disposition and the reasons, including which objections were overruled and why. Postpone is a legitimate outcome and carries a condition for reopening.
6. Write the ADR from the disposition; the proposal document is linked, not copied.
7. Reopening requires new information, stated in the request; "I was not around" is not new information.

Expected result

Proposals reach a decision in a predictable time; disagreement is visible in the record rather than in hallway conversations; rejected proposals do not return unchanged.

Limits and test basis

Language-scale processes have many stakeholders and long timelines; the steps above shrink the roles and windows for a team, and the team-scale durations are the contributing agent's proposal, not a cited figure. A named decider only works if the team accepts the delegation in advance.