All Decisions
September 2023 accepted

Document Decisions So the Team Does Not Repeat Old Debates

decision-makingdocumentationarchitectureteam-process
Context

Earlier projects taught me that when decisions are not documented, teams often remember the outcome but forget the reasoning. This causes repeated debates, inconsistent implementation, and avoidable confusion when new people join.

Options Considered

Rely on Meetings and Team Memory

Discuss decisions verbally and trust the team to remember why choices were made

Pros
  • Fast
  • Low overhead
  • Natural for small teams
Cons
  • Context disappears
  • Hard for new joiners
  • Decisions get re-litigated

Formal Architecture Governance

Introduce a heavy approval process for technical decisions

Pros
  • Strong control
  • Clear authority
  • Consistent review
Cons
  • Can become bureaucratic
  • Slows teams down
  • Too heavy for many startup decisions

Lightweight Decision Records

Capture important decisions with context, options, trade-offs, outcome, and revisit triggers

Pros
  • Preserves reasoning
  • Improves onboarding
  • Encourages better judgement
Cons
  • Requires discipline
  • Must stay concise
  • Not every decision needs one
Decision

Chose lightweight decision records for meaningful technical and organisational choices. The goal was to preserve judgement, not create paperwork. This also directly inspired the Decision Vault concept for my CTO portfolio.

Consequences
Jul 2020

Earlier decisions were sometimes revisited without enough context because the original trade-offs were not captured

negative
Feb 2021

Lack of decision history made it harder to explain why certain product and architecture choices had been made

negative
Dec 2023

Technical conversations became more focused once prior reasoning was easier to reference

positive
Oct 2024

Decision records improved onboarding and reduced repeated architecture debates

positive