Experienced staff software engineers at a previous job introduced me to the practice of maintaining decision records. Of course I was aware of RFCs for a long time, but I had never before seen the usage of decision records in practice.

I have learned that these documents help facilitate a professional peer-review structure and bring about alignment and clarity across large teams. Decision records also help onboard new members to a team or organization easily. Just reading a decision record of a staff engineer can teach a junior engineer much about how to think through a problem, choose relevant criteria, and receive peer-review with grace.

I have included my own take on a decision record template, but its less important that one uses a particular template over another. As with most things: keep what works for you, take out what doesn't, and iteratively improve it over time.

Released under the MIT license.