SATURN 2020

More and more teams capture their design decisions in Architectural Decision Records (ADRs). These ADRs are commonly used to document decisions after they have been taken. We will share a visual format for ADRs which has proven to also be useful in the period leading up to the decision itself, in which a team learns about a decision's context and business aspects, finds alternatives, and finally makes the trade-off between them. We call this format 'decision stories.' We developed and optimized the format by applying several iterations in practice over the past few years.

We will share our experiences, which show that the format not only captures a decision and its rationale, but also helps guide the decision process and engage stakeholders. The format is intuitive in use, and has shown to improve communication, both within teams as well as with external stakeholders.

In this experience report, you will hear how we developed our design decision story template, and learn how to get the most out of the format in practice.