In MDM, we do this through a familiar software engineering practice called version control. […] MDM takes this process and supercharges it; it’s like a roadmap of your design and development journey. While a standard message might be something as simple as “fix avatar color,” an MDM practitioner would write an in-depth reflection not only on the technical implementation but also on its implications for and relationship to the greater design.
Another tool in MDM is a committed design journaling practice. Here you pause every day or so to record and explore your more conceptual insights into the design and implementation.
Legendary designer Chris Crawford (2003, 40) asserts that rules are there to “prevent strategies that subvert the challenge.”