Principle
Document Rationale
Capture why a decision was made, not just what was decided.
Decisions should be documented together with context, rationale, assumptions and trade-offs.
The purpose is not documentation for its own sake.
The purpose is to help future teams understand:
- Why a decision was made
- Which alternatives were considered
- Which assumptions existed
- Which consequences were accepted
Organizations cannot learn effectively from decisions they no longer understand.
Relations
- Related patterns:
- decision-vacuum