{"slug": "architectural-decision-records-adrs-a-practical-guide-for-engineering-teams", "title": "Architectural Decision Records (ADRs): A Practical Guide for Engineering Teams", "summary": "GitLab publicly documents architectural and design decisions in its handbook, using Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) stored in /docs/adr/ and committed in the same PR as the related change, according to a practical guide for engineering teams. ADRs are lightweight 1-2 page Markdown documents that capture a significant architectural decision, its context, alternatives considered, reasoning, and consequences, helping teams preserve decision context, improve onboarding, and enable better future decisions. The guide recommends creating an ADR for decisions that are hard to reverse, involve trade-offs, are cross-cutting, security-related, performance-critical, infrastructure-related, affect external APIs, or introduce new frameworks, and provides a simple template with fields for status, date, context, decision, alternatives, and consequences.", "body_md": "What ADRs are, when to write one, and how to start using Architectural Decision Records\n\n1. Background\n\nRecently, I’ve been looking into how large engineering organizations manage and document architectural decisions over time.\n\nAcross most teams I’ve worked with, there’s rarely a clear record explaining why a given approach was chosen. The implementation lives in code, but the reasoning is lost. This makes it harder to:\n\nUnderstand historical decisions\n\nOnboard new team members\n\nRevisit or improve past solutions\n\nAvoid repeating previous discussions\n\nTo address this, many companies use Architectural Decision Records (ADRs).\n\n2. What Are ADRs?\n\nAn Architectural Decision Record (ADR) is a short document that captures:\n\nA significant architectural decision\n\nThe context in which it was made\n\nThe alternatives considered\n\nThe reasoning behind the chosen solution\n\nThe consequences of that decision\n\nADRs are:\n\nLightweight (usually 1–2 pages)\n\nStored in the Git repository\n\nWritten in Markdown\n\nVersion-controlled alongside the code\n\nThey are not long design documents — just focused records of important decisions.\n\n3. Why Use ADRs?\n\nPreserve Decision Context\n\nInstead of asking: “Why did we implement it this way?”\n\nWe can look at the ADR and see:\n\nWhat constraints existed\n\nWhat trade-offs were considered\n\nWhy other options were rejected\n\nImprove Onboarding\n\nNew team members can:\n\nRead ADRs to understand major system choices\n\nLearn system philosophy faster\n\nAvoid repeating already-discussed ideas\n\nEnable Better Future Decisions\n\nWhen revisiting architecture, ADRs help us:\n\nEvaluate whether assumptions still hold\n\nUnderstand consequences of past trade-offs\n\nMake changes intentionally instead of reactively\n\nAlign Team Thinking\n\nWriting ADRs forces us to:\n\nClarify trade-offs\n\nExplicitly evaluate alternatives\n\nMake decisions more intentional\n\n4. What Kind of Decisions Should Have an ADR?\n\nIf you’re unsure, ask in your team’s design review or ping whoever owns that part of the system.\n\nNot every small change needs one.\n\nADRs are useful for decisions that are:\n\nHard to reverse\n\nWhen there are multiple viable options\n\nWhen the decision involves trade-offs — You’re balancing things like: speed vs scalability, simplicity vs flexibility, cost vs performance\n\nCross-cutting (affects multiple systems/services)\n\nSecurity-related\n\nPerformance-critical\n\nInfrastructure-related\n\nAffecting external APIs or contracts\n\nIntroducing new frameworks or major dependencies\n\nIf a decision is important, create an ADR even if there are no clear trade-offs or alternatives. Documenting the context and reasoning is still valuable.\n\nExamples:\n\nChoosing between REST and gRPC for a new internal service\n\nAdopting a message queue instead of synchronous calls\n\nPicking a multi-tenancy strategy (shared DB vs schema-per-tenant)\n\nIntroducing a caching layer and its invalidation strategy\n\n5. A Simple ADR Template\n\nWe can use a simple template like this:\n\n```\n# ADR-0001: Picking a multi-tenancy strategy (shared DB vs schema-per-tenant)\n## StatusProposed | Accepted | Rejected | Superseded\n## DateYYYY-MM-DD\n## ContextDescribe the problem, background, and why this decision is needed.\n- What is happening?- What constraints exist? (technical, business, timeline)- What problem are we solving?\n## DecisionDescribe the chosen solution.\n## Alternatives Considered- Option A- Option B- Option C\n## Consequences### Positive- ...\n### Negative- ...\n```\n\nEach ADR would:\n\nHave a number (ADR-0001, ADR-0002, etc.)\n\nBe stored in /docs/adr/\n\nBe committed in the same PR as the related change (when possible)\n\n6. Example From Industry\n\nMany large engineering organizations use ADRs.\n\nFor example, GitLab documents architectural and design decisions publicly in their handbook:\n\nWhen making a significant architectural decision: Create a new ADR file in /docs/adr/\n\nShare it in PR for review\n\nOnce agreed, mark the status as Accepted\n\nIf the decision changes later:\n\nCreate a new ADR\n\nReference the previous one\n\nMark the old one as superseded.\n\nKeep it simple. No heavy governance.\n\n8. What You Get Out of It\n\nIf we adopt ADRs, we can expect:\n\nBetter long-term maintainability\n\nClear historical record of architectural evolution\n\nFaster onboarding\n\nMore structured technical discussions\n\nReduced knowledge silos\n\n9. How to Start\n\nYou don’t need everyone to agree before you start. You can do this on your own:\n\nMake a /docs/adr/ folder and put a simple template in it\n\nWrite ADR-0001 about a decision your team already made. Writing it after the fact is fine\n\nAdd a link to it in your next PR\n\nWait and see if people find it useful before you add any rules around it\n\nHow long an ADR takes depends on the decision. A big one may need days of investigation and discussion. But that work happens anyway before you decide. The ADR just captures what you already worked out, so the writing part is usually short.\n\n10. Take the Template\n\nThe full template is here, free to copy and change however you want:\n\nSave it as /docs/adr/0000-template.md in your repo and copy it every time you write a new ADR. If you change something to fit your team better, I'd like to hear about it. Leave a comment on the gist.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/architectural-decision-records-adrs-a-practical-guide-for-engineering-teams", "canonical_source": "https://blog.devgenius.io/architectural-decision-records-adrs-a-practical-guide-for-engineering-teams-169991c8e6e7?source=rss----4e2c1156667e---4", "published_at": "2026-08-20 11:44:40+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-20 12:15:14.258138+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools"], "entities": ["GitLab"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/architectural-decision-records-adrs-a-practical-guide-for-engineering-teams", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/architectural-decision-records-adrs-a-practical-guide-for-engineering-teams.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/architectural-decision-records-adrs-a-practical-guide-for-engineering-teams.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/architectural-decision-records-adrs-a-practical-guide-for-engineering-teams.jsonld"}}