On the back side, put all your chip resistors and capacitors and make them big enough, i.e. at least 0805 or larger so that when we put the glue on the board between the pads, we don't have to worry about getting glue on the SMD pads. Most of us don't have glue dispensers small enough to put a tiny dot of glue down reliably so that we won't get glue on the SMD pads for an 0603 or 0402 part. Of course there are other strategies we can use to put small parts on the reverse side of the board, so if you must use the smaller parts, worry not. Poorly designed SMD boards cause terrific quality problems that we can't fix. If a set of pads are too small and are totally covered by the part, then we can solder it, but whose to say whether the part actually got soldered.
Visual inspection can only do so much to ferret out poor quality solder joints.
Testing will frequently not turn up a poor solder joint and the unit will fail in the field. Holes in pads cause the solder to be wicked away from the part and will invariably cause a poor solder joint that will go through testing only to fail later in the field. We know, when the board gets tight, it is awfully tempting to put that via in the middle of a solder pad. Some so called gurus recommend this, but evidentally, they've never had to deal with the consequences. Surface mount parts come on reels, in tubes and matrix trays.