David Mc Cusker has a story posted on methodology. A couple quotes, though you really should read the whole piece.

What's the right amount of electronic equipment that demands a pilot's attention in a fighter cockpit? If a pilot must turn things off in order to think straight, maybe there's too much demand on attention. The situation with a developer is similar. We need attention left over after methodology.

What a great analogy! If you don't know what David's referring to, this is a phenomenon that aeronautics engineers noted with military pilots: modern planes have all kinds of aids to the pilot, but pilots tend to shut down or ignore many of them, especially in combat situations, so they can focus on flying the plane and fighting their adversary. This is probably a very realistic analogy: when under stress, developers start to ignore process and procedure so they can concentrate on the job at hand.

...systems should be designed so they can be presented in inverted pyramid style, with summaries that can be expanded into more detailed treatments when drill down is desired. Obviously this is what the original structured design concept was all about, but in practice this style of design rarely happens. Instead folks design systems so the overall summaries are not quite true when you get into the details.

I really like what David has to say about design. Simplify your design, simplify your process too. I wish I could expand on this more, but I'm swamped today.