Some people think we still need to do design for web application. We all know that design is important. System can get complicate pretty fast. Success or failure in the long run depends on a good design. There is an interesting paper talking about how to do web application design in UML.
Some people think we don't need to do detailed design. Unlike conventional software development, the web environment is too dynamic and time is too short. Besides, most applications are data-oriented. The first thing to do is building a data model. The relationships are pretty much embeded in data not program modules. So we can have a flat architecture that any broken modules doesn't have (much) effect on others.
Some people go extreme!
Hmm...it seems like they are all right from their points of view. Most web applications are data-oriented. However, it will become very difficult to maintain in the long run if we don't have a solid design documentation. To do detailed design in the fast pace environment is ridiculous. Architectural design seems to be acceptable.
So what do you think???