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A Simple but Powerful Tool to Record Your Architectural Decisions
From the moment I took over the role of technology architect, I’ve been wondering why certain decisions were made instead of other options.
Visio diagrams are great, but they’re nothing but pictures. They don’t tell you the story behind why certain arrows go a certain way and not the other way round.
ThoughtWorks Technology Radar
Whilst trying to solve this dilemma, I came across the latest edition of ThoughtWorks Technology Radar.
“We are a software company and a community of passionate, purpose-led individuals. We think disruptively to deliver technology to address our clients’ toughest challenges, all while seeking to revolutionize the IT industry and create positive social change.” — ThoughtWorks
In the Technology Radar, ThoughtWorks publishes news on what you should use, what you should keep doing, and what you could try.
ThoughtWorks talks about various:
While reading the techniques section, I noticed that ThoughtWorks recommends adoption of Lightweight Architecture Decision Records(LADR).
I didn’t know about LADR, so I started researching.
History of LADR
While researching LADR, I came across a very interesting article written by Michael Nygard. The article talks about having a technique to embed architecture documentation as part of code itself.
Quoting from the article:
Architecture for Agile projects has to be described and defined differently. Not all decisions will be made at once, nor will all of them be done when the project begins. — Michael Nygard
This is true. Agile is widely used, and there needs to be a defined process to capture all architectural decisions. Often, we end up creating large amounts of documentation which nobody likes to read.
