Catalog
concept#Architecture#Governance#Reliability#Software Engineering

Architecture Decision Making

A structured approach for capturing, evaluating, and documenting architecture decisions to ensure consistency and traceability across system architectures.

Architecture decision making defines structured processes for capturing, evaluating, and recording architectural choices.
Established
High

Classification

  • Medium
  • Organizational
  • Architectural
  • Intermediate

Technical context

Version control system (e.g., Git) for ADR storageIssue tracker and CI/CD pipelines for linkage to implementationWikis or knowledge bases for governance and review processes

Principles & goals

Transparency: Decisions and rationales must be documented and discoverable.Context awareness: Decisions consider business goals and technical constraints.Minimal effort: Documentation should be concise but sufficient for traceability.
Discovery
Enterprise, Domain, Team

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Bureaucracy: Heavy processes can block fast delivery cycles.
  • Misprioritization: Focusing on documentation instead of real risks.
  • Inconsistent application across teams leads to fragmentation.
  • Document decisions concisely with clear rationale and alternatives
  • Link ADRs to implementation tickets and tests
  • Establish regular governance checks instead of ad‑hoc reviews

I/O & resources

  • Business goals, roadmap, stakeholder requirements
  • Technical context, architecture diagrams, existing ADRs
  • Cost estimates, risk analyses, compliance constraints
  • Architecture decision record (ADR) with rationale
  • Updated architecture artifacts and roadmap adjustments
  • Metrics and monitoring indicators for follow‑up

Description

Architecture decision making defines structured processes for capturing, evaluating, and recording architectural choices. It aligns technical criteria with business objectives and risks to enable consistent, transparent decisions. Includes decision models, evaluation metrics, and governance guidance. Applied, it improves accountability, surfaces trade‑offs, and guides technical‑debt prioritization.

✔

  • Improved traceability of architecture decisions across projects.
  • Easier communication between technical and business teams via clear documented rationale.
  • Basis for governance, reviews, and continuous improvement of architecture practices.

✖

  • Increased documentation overhead if processes are not kept lean.
  • Requires discipline and culture; otherwise decisions become stale quickly.
  • Not every short‑term implementation issue justifies a formal decision.

  • Number of documented decisions

    Counts formally recorded architecture decisions over time.

  • Decision lead time

    Time between initiating an issue and finalizing a decision.

  • Ratio of implemented vs. discarded decisions

    Measures implementation success and the quality of decision processes.

ADR collection of a payments provider

Documented series of architecture decisions for module boundaries, data ownership, and transaction strategy.

Migration to cloud‑first platform

Decisions on cloud architecture, security architecture and operational processes with migration plan.

Structuring an observability concept

Selection of metrics, tracing architecture and alerting strategies based on decision documentation.

1

Introduce a lightweight ADR format and repository

2

Define roles, review processes, and SLAs for decisions

3

Train architecture and product teams for consistent application

4

Regular reviews and retrospectives to improve the process

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Imprecise decisions lead to inconsistent architecture and refactoring effort
  • Missing documentation increases discovery and onboarding costs
  • Unaddressed risks accumulate technical debt
CentralizationKnowledge gapsLegacy dependencies
  • Formal ADR protocol for trivial implementation issues
  • Discarding ADRs without documented reasons
  • Ignoring stakeholder input on critical architecture decisions
  • Overly detailed documentation blocks agility
  • No follow‑up on impact after implementation
  • Unclear roles cause delayed decisions
Architectural understanding and systems thinkingStakeholder facilitation and decision moderationRisk assessment and cost estimation
ScalabilitySecurity and compliance requirementsTime‑to‑market and maintainability
  • • Regulatory requirements and compliance
  • • Existing infrastructure and budget limits
  • • Time pressure from business requirements