Technical debt is a problem that is caused when speed of delivery is prioritized over the stability of the product. More often than not, delivery takes precedence over other aspects of software development like quality, security, and user experience. Technical debt behaves like financial debt. The longer we have technical debt, the higher we pay to address it. The higher costs are due to difficulty in changing the bad design, poor code implementation, among other problems. Technical debt is accrued due to our hurried decisions to deliver a software product using poor design patterns, poor coding standards, or poor documentation to meet the deadline. Technical debt Studies have shown that technical debt reduces a team's efficiency by 40%. This causes reduced investments in innovation and takes longer to develop new features in the product. Lack of documentation causes knowledge debt. With time the reasoning behind the key decisions will fade away as those decisions were not documented. This makes code difficult to understand and maintain by future developers due to the lack of knowledge of those decisions. Although the teams recognize the symptoms of technical debt, they face difficulties in managing it. Usually, the fix is that you take a big refactoring project, which is costly and causes huge disruption. Instead, we should be looking for innovative ways to prevent technical debt. Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) are simple documents used to capture important design decisions, reasons for those decisions, and the trade-offs made while taking those decisions. If they capture the information as intended, then they can be extremely useful in understanding how the system evolved and justify the current state of the system. ADRs are becoming living documents in the development process. Let’s discuss how they can be useful in staying ahead of technical debt. What Are Architectural Decision Records (ADRs)? An Architectural Decision Record (ADR) is a concise, text-based document that captures a significant architectural choice made for a specific software system or project. It records the context of the problem, the options considered, the final decision taken, and the immediate and long-term consequences of that decision. ADR Structure The clear structure of the ADR is the real power of ADR. Various parts of ADR help the team in capturing the important details of the decisions and the reasoning behind those key decisions. Basic building blocks of ADR are based on popular templates like Nygard and MADR. Irrespective of the format used, the goal of ADR is the same. The ADR should be able to make it easy to determine the rationale behind the decisions taken, why they were taken, and what trade-offs were considered. Metadata and Status Metadata and Status The metadata section provides a summary that helps readers of the document to quickly understand the decision’s scope, relevance, and traceability. ComponentUsageID   / NumberThis   is usually a sequence number that will allow you to easily reference the   document and provide the order in which the decisions arrived.TitleYou must provide a short   description to provide the essence of the decision (e.g., "Use SQL   Server for Core Data Storage").DateYou   should provide the date the ADR was last updated. This will help track   decisions.StatusYou should provide the   current status of the document. Status of ADR can be Proposed, Accepted,   Rejected, Deprecated, or Superseded by.Deciders/AuthorsYou   should provide the list of the individuals or group(s) responsible for   writing and approving the decision. It helps identify ADRS owners and   provides touchpoints for future questions and/or suggestions. ComponentUsageID   / NumberThis   is usually a sequence number that will allow you to easily reference the   document and provide the order in which the decisions arrived.TitleYou must provide a short   description to provide the essence of the decision (e.g., "Use SQL   Server for Core Data Storage").DateYou   should provide the date the ADR was last updated. This will help track   decisions.StatusYou should provide the   current status of the document. Status of ADR can be Proposed, Accepted,   Rejected, Deprecated, or Superseded by.Deciders/AuthorsYou   should provide the list of the individuals or group(s) responsible for   writing and approving the decision. It helps identify ADRS owners and   provides touchpoints for future questions and/or suggestions. ComponentUsageID   / NumberThis   is usually a sequence number that will allow you to easily reference the   document and provide the order in which the decisions arrived.TitleYou must provide a short   description to provide the essence of the decision (e.g., "Use SQL   Server for Core Data Storage").DateYou   should provide the date the ADR was last updated. This will help track   decisions.StatusYou should provide the   current status of the document. Status of ADR can be Proposed, Accepted,   Rejected, Deprecated, or Superseded by.Deciders/AuthorsYou   should provide the list of the individuals or group(s) responsible for   writing and approving the decision. It helps identify ADRS owners and   provides touchpoints for future questions and/or suggestions. ComponentUsage Component Component Component Usage Usage Usage ID   / NumberThis   is usually a sequence number that will allow you to easily reference the   document and provide the order in which the decisions arrived. ID   / Number ID   / Number ID   / Number This   is usually a sequence number that will allow you to easily reference the   document and provide the order in which the decisions arrived. This   is usually a sequence number that will allow you to easily reference the   document and provide the order in which the decisions arrived. TitleYou must provide a short   description to provide the essence of the decision (e.g., "Use SQL   Server for Core Data Storage"). Title Title Title You must provide a short   description to provide the essence of the decision (e.g., "Use SQL   Server for Core Data Storage"). You must provide a short   description to provide the essence of the decision (e.g., "Use SQL   Server for Core Data Storage"). DateYou   should provide the date the ADR was last updated. This will help track   decisions. Date Date Date You   should provide the date the ADR was last updated. This will help track   decisions. You   should provide the date the ADR was last updated. This will help track   decisions. StatusYou should provide the   current status of the document. Status of ADR can be Proposed, Accepted,   Rejected, Deprecated, or Superseded by. Status Status Status You should provide the   current status of the document. Status of ADR can be Proposed, Accepted,   Rejected, Deprecated, or Superseded by. You should provide the   current status of the document. Status of ADR can be Proposed, Accepted,   Rejected, Deprecated, or Superseded by. Proposed Accepted Rejected Deprecated Superseded by Deciders/AuthorsYou   should provide the list of the individuals or group(s) responsible for   writing and approving the decision. It helps identify ADRS owners and   provides touchpoints for future questions and/or suggestions. Deciders/Authors Deciders/Authors Deciders/Authors You   should provide the list of the individuals or group(s) responsible for   writing and approving the decision. It helps identify ADRS owners and   provides touchpoints for future questions and/or suggestions. You   should provide the list of the individuals or group(s) responsible for   writing and approving the decision. It helps identify ADRS owners and   provides touchpoints for future questions and/or suggestions. Context - The Problem Statement Context - The Problem Statement You can define the architectural problem that needs the ADR in this section. The “What”: The problem statement must be a precise description of the current requirement(s) and/or constraints at play. In other words, the WHAT should articulate the need(s) that drive the decision(s). The “What”: WHAT need(s) Main Content: You should describe the context in which the decision is being made, whether it is a technical, organizational, or business environment. You must explain why the decision is necessary and ensure that all stakeholders are aligned with the problem statement. You must also state “pain points” or existing technical debt that the decision is addressing. If the technical debt is due to any past decision, you must provide the reference to it and address how it will be resolved, with the decision being made in ADR. Main Content: pain points How it helps in reducing Technical Debt: When you clearly provide the context of past and current decisions, along with ensuring stakeholder alignment, there is no ambiguity left. The ADR explains the problem and how it is being addressed. How it helps in reducing Technical Debt: Trade-Offs Trade-Offs There are always multiple options to consider when you are designing software, and you always have constraints that lead you to a certain decision at that point in time. This section allows you to describe the trade-offs of various options that were available and why other options were eliminated. The “What”: You describe all the viable alternatives, usually two to four, which may include options like “do nothing”. The “What”: Main Content: You must describe all viable options along with the pros and cons of each of them. Main Content: How it helps in reducing Technical Debt: This section is a powerful debt prevention mechanism that you have. It shows that you have done due diligence and documented all the options available in the given context. They can be decisions taken in the past or ignored in the past. You can change the past decisions in the light of new requirements, innovations in technology, a changing landscape of a business, decisions that were poor or were taken to help the business release the product faster, which led to technical debt. How it helps in reducing Technical Debt: Decision Making Decision Making You should provide a definitive, unambiguous statement of the decision taken. The “What”: You should give a clear, often short, sentence or paragraph stating the chosen architectural path. The “What”: Example: " Kafka is recommended for all inter-service communication instead of a direct HTTP API." Example: Kafka Main Content: This is where you not only provide details of selected options but also why other options were not as good comparatively. Main Content: Rationale - The "Why" Rationale - The "Why" If a decision is made, then there must be a justification for it. The “What”: You should provide the justification for the decision that has been taken. Provide the reference to context and criteria that led to the chosen option. The “What”: Main Content: You must provide the justification of chosen option(s). An example can be, “the chosen option is the only one that will provide the required level of resiliency”. If you have validated your decision with any experiment/research, you should describe that. You must also describe why other options were not as attractive as the chosen one. Main Content: How it helps in reducing Technical Debt: When you document the choices and justification for choosing an option, you prevent Knowledge Debt by preserving the intellectual capital and the logic used at the time. This ensures future developers understand the strategic intent. How it helps in reducing Technical Debt: Knowledge Debt Consequences Consequences When you make a decision, it will have consequences. This section documents what you have thought of. The “What”: You must document anticipated consequences, good or bad, so that whoever is referencing the ADR knows the implications of the decision. The “What”: Main Content: The consequences can be positive or negative. An example of a positive consequence may be listed as “Will help with improvement in resiliency of product.”  A negative consequence can be “extra effort to implement.” Main Content: Follow-Up/Mitigation: Crucially, this section should often include a remediation plan or a sunset date for any accepted debt. Follow-Up/Mitigation: remediation plan sunset date Purpose in Reducing Technical Debt: When you write down all the details of a decisio,n including upsides and downsides, you will automatically uncover the patterns that lead to technical debt. This documentation helps you surface it and provides an opportunity to be intentional about the technical debt. You also have the opportunity to manage and track the technical debt, making the ADR a powerful tool in staying ahead of the risks. Purpose in Reducing Technical Debt: The Evolving Role of ADRs You can make ADRs go beyond their core value of static historical logs. As you make ADRs central to your agile environment, they become strategic tools that help you govern the system and help you manage the system’s future health and debt profile. Integration with the Development Workflow We suggest that you make the ADR a modern utility and integrate it seamlessly with the engineering workflow so that it becomes a living document. You must make it a mandatory step to document the decision in ADR and not as an afterthought. It is recommended that you store the ADRs in a text format like markdown so that they can be checked into a source control repository like Git. Having these ADRs checked into source control will help you maintain the version history and easily help you with tracking the ownership of the ADR. As you maintain the ADR in Git, you can go further and add rules so that the PR reviews are mandatory. This will ensure healthy discussion and oversight when tech debt is being incurred, and let multiple contributors provide feedback, which may help in avoiding the tech debt. Enterprise Governance and Consistency If you work in an enterprise environment where you have microservice architecture or multiple systems that need integration with each other, the ADRs become essential in maintaining architectural consistency. In enterprises, where every team can lean on different sets of technologies will lead to a situation where you may end up with too many different technologies to solve the same problem. This causes fragmentation of debt. Managing fragmentation debt will help you with reduced cost, as you don’t have to purchase licenses for multiple software services for the same purpose. It also improves your security profile as you will have fewer components to evaluate and monitor for security vulnerabilities. ADRs can provide essential guardrails in your decentralized environment, for example, and an ADR states that RabbitMQ is to be used for message queueing, then the use of any other similar system gets automatically discouraged. A team that really needs to use a different message queuing system in that case requires a strong documented reason. Decision-Making Transparency The process of writing and reviewing an ADR will help you in promoting the culture of transparency, collaboration, and accountability. As you involve all stakeholders in the process, you bring in transparency and healthy discussion that helps you make decisions. Transparency will help you avoid conflict with other decisions, as everyone is aware of past ADRs or the ADRs in progress. Involvement of larger groups of stakeholders will help you prevent re-litigation of the decisions inthe  future. As you keep focus on clear communication during the ADR approval process, it will reduce friction and foster alignment between stakeholders, helping you in avoiding or reducing tech debt. Managing Change Over Time You must have realized by now that the ADRs are not to be treated as static documents, but they should be flexible in a way that they become the system’s evolutionary path. No architectural choice is permanent; you should be able to amend your decisions to satisfy a new business requirement or implement a new more efficient framework to run your software better and safer. In such scenarios, your ADR process should have provision that allows you to set its status as “Deprecated” or “Superseded by [new ADR id].” This allows you to manage the change in the landscape of your product over time, which in turn helps you with tackling tech debt effectively. new ADR id Best Practices for Implementing and Sustaining ADRs You cannot take ten technical decisions and be done with all your ADRs. There must be a regular cadence for reviewing any past decisions to make sure they still hold. The key to realizing this will help you ensure an ADR process that is lightweight, habitual, and deeply integrated into the team’s culture. Here are some best practices you can utilize. 1. Start Small: Focus on Significance, Not Volume 1. Start Small: Focus on Significance, Not Volume Keep the process of ADRs small and easy to follow so that you focus on making decisions, rather than the process itself. You should also focus on the decisions that have the most value or impact. 2. Make it a Habit: Integrate into Daily Practice 2. Make it a Habit: Integrate into Daily Practice Making ADR an organic part of the development lifecycle will help your team understand the real value of these decisions and will not make it an administrative task. You must utilize every opportunity to reference ADR, be it designing a new feature or code review that directly relates to ADR. 3. Keep it Lightweight: Minimize the Bureaucratic Burden 3. Keep it Lightweight: Minimize the Bureaucratic Burden An effective ADR is fast to write and fast to read. If your documentation of ADR is lengthy, it becomes difficult to follow the risks. You can choose to create multiple ADRs that are lightweight, focused on one point, and easy to follow. You should define a clear template with a guideline; it will reduce the chances of introducing documentation debt. 4. Foster a Culture of Documentation: Value Knowledge Sharing 4. Foster a Culture of Documentation: Value Knowledge Sharing Ultimately, your team’s success with ADRs hinges not on the team's underlying values. ADRs thrive in a culture that values knowledge sharing and transparency. You must collaborate with all stakeholders who are impacted by the decisions and consistently reference ADRs when making design choices. This will help you share the knowledge of past decisions, enhancing the value of documentation. Conclusion Software with technical debt can cripple you. It is also a reality in software development that you will always have situations when you will have to take technical debt; however, you must always try to prevent it. The challenge of technical debt is an inescapable reality in software development, but you can prevent it from crippling you. As we explored, the evolution of the ADR can be a pivotal shift in how your engineering teams can approach this risk. ADRs need not be mere historical documents. You can make it an effective tool to manage tech debt. Looking ahead, automation and artificial intelligence can further revolutionize this process and make ADRs dynamic.

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How ADRs Help Engineering Teams Cut Costs and Reduce Technical Debt Over Time

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