Why Every System Design Needs "Non-Goals"
The most frequent cause of architectural failure is scope expansion. An RFC must state with complete transparency what the proposal is explicitly NOT attempting to solve.
By enumerating non-goals upfront, you prevent endless stakeholder tangents and establish strict boundaries for the minimum viable production delivery.
Constructing the Alternatives Trade-Off Matrix
No architecture is perfect; every engineering decision involves trade-offs between latency, complexity, cost, and developer ergonomics.
Always evaluate at least two alternative approaches alongside your proposed solution, clearly documenting the quantitative reasons why the alternatives were rejected.
Step-by-Step Tutorial
Define Problem Statement & Core Metrics
Document the exact business pain point with numbers (e.g. "$4,200/mo server compute spend; 8s response latency").
Draft System Architecture & Data Flows
Draw component diagrams and define database schema migrations, caching layers, and API contracts.
Document Rollback & Migration Strategy
Detail step-by-step feature flag rollouts, canary deployments, and automated rollback health check thresholds.
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Frequently Asked Questions
When should an engineer write an RFC?
Write an RFC whenever a proposed change impacts multiple teams, introduces a new third-party dependency, changes public API contracts, or alters database schemas.