I was not expecting tense to be a stumbling block with writing design proposals that’ll eventually become documentation. I’ve been catching myself writing in the future tense — “this service will do this” — instead of the present tense — “this service does this.” This is probably a habit I formed while writing design proposals to be reviewed, only to leave them be forgotten once they’re approved.
I’m trying to avoid that here, and although the use of present tense instead of future tense might seem like a small thing, I think it’s a very important one. Once the design is approved and realised, what will be will eventually become what is, and I want to make sure the reader gets that, and keeps it up to that when the design changes. Using the wrong tense here would just signal to the reader that the document is just a proposal and is no longer relevant. And when that happens, it’ll never get looked at again.