Signs it is time to revisit architecture decision records
This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. A few signals that architecture decision records is due some attention.
The right architecture for a team of three is the wrong one for a team of thirty, and vice versa. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
The signals
- Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
- The answer depends on who you ask
- Record the decision, the alternatives, and why they were rejected
- The reasoning is what future teams actually need
How we handle it
A short record beats a long document nobody opens. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.
The short version
Architecture is the set of decisions that are expensive to reverse, which is the only reason they deserve the name. Three things worth confirming about architecture decision records before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- A short record beats a long document nobody opens — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.