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Ask HN: Do You Use Architecture Decision Record (ADR)?

2 pointsby CedricTeytonalmost 2 years ago

1 comment

turtleyachtalmost 2 years ago
We used to, but they heavily depend on business sponsorship and&#x2F;or self-organizing teams. If they are not encoded in automated enforcement--through Github Actions, for example--they are otherwise ignored.<p>This also means they are rarely updated. As tribal knowledge departs, ADRs become lonely artifacts of what was and could have been: unable to be kept current, they serve as faint guidance of a distant past.<p>One also does not want to be in the unenviable position of seeming to defend the old guard against the progress of new business initiatives that otherwise appear to shirk recommendations viewed as archaic or deprecated.<p>On the other hand, I love ADRs. They&#x27;re the closest to RFCs for that category of documentation. Just that if the mind share (or sufficiently proper stick) is absent, folks will pretend not to read your links and just do their own thing anyway.<p>Maybe ADRs are best appropriate for <i>startups,</i> where documentation is sparse and people of influence can multiply mimetic exposure through docs.