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Decision artefacts
Decision artefacts are the smallest documents that keep decisions intact across time, teams, and politics. They are how you scale judgment without scaling meetings.
Definition
- A decision artefact captures: the problem, constraints, options considered, decision made, tradeoffs accepted, risks, owner, and follow-up signals.
- It is not documentation for its own sake. It is a coordination tool that reduces churn and prevents re-litigation.
- In governance systems, decision artefacts are the unit of accountability.
Why it matters
- Most delivery friction is decision ambiguity: teams build, then discover misalignment late.
- Distributed ecosystems and multi-team programs require traceability. Without artefacts, context evaporates and politics fills the gap.
- Decision artefacts make critique productive: you critique a proposal, not a person.
- They are also a cultural tool: they enforce individual accountability while keeping collaboration psychologically safe.
- In practice, this is where many digital programs fail: the concept is understood, but the operating discipline is missing.
Common failure modes
- No decision record: decisions are made in meetings and lost in chat logs.
- Overweight docs: artefacts become strategy decks and nobody reads them.
- No owner: decisions exist, but nobody is accountable for outcomes.
- No tradeoffs: teams pretend there was a perfect solution; reversals become inevitable.
- Artefacts without change: writing occurs, but it doesn’t drive alignment or action.
How I design it
- Use a strict template: problem → constraints → options → decision → tradeoffs → risks → follow-up signal.
- Keep artefacts short enough to read in 3–5 minutes. If it’s longer, it’s probably multiple decisions.
- Link artefacts to state models and patterns when relevant; decisions should land in the system.
- Build rituals around them: pre-read, brutally candid critique, clear decision moment.
- Make them searchable and persistent: one place, versioned, with stable links.
- Store artefacts next to the work (repo/wiki) and link them from tickets and PRDs so they stay alive, not forgotten.
- Treat it as a repeatable pattern: define it, test it in production, measure it, and evolve it with evidence.
Related work
Proof map claims
Case studies
See also
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