Many folks stumble on very similar issues when they begin their journey towards creating and executing DO-254 compliant design projects. The good news is that each of these issues has solutions. Understanding these common pitfalls, and proactively addressing them before they cost a project time, resource and certification risk, is essential. Some of these common pitfalls, along with advice for addressing them (based on learnings from successful DO-254 programs), are described in this paper.