architecture

An Architecture Decision Record (ADR) captures architectural decisions, trade-offs, and rationale in a single auditable document. You need to write an ADR to prevent knowledge loss and indecision across teams when selecting technologies or designing system components.

You document system design trade-offs by creating an ADR with a structured format covering context, available options, decisions, and consequences. This formalizes your design rationale and technology choices for evaluation during system design reviews.

The best way to structure technology selection evaluation is using a standardized ADR format that explicitly separates context, available options, the final decision, and trade-offs. This structured approach ensures all design rationale is auditable and comparable across projects.

Yes, you can use ADRs to formalize design proposals when designing new components. Applying an Architecture Decision Record to your system design proposals documents the context and action items needed to formalize decisions across your project workflow.

Your team loses context on past technology decisions because rationale is not systematically documented. You can prevent this knowledge loss by creating ADRs that record trade-offs and design decisions in a single, auditable document for future reference.

An architecture review workflow should include creating and evaluating ADRs that document context, options, decisions, and trade-offs. Applying this structured decision process prevents indecision and ensures technology choices are formalized and auditable.