Decision Record
A simple template for documenting hard decisions so you can learn from them later.
A decision record is the one-page document that captures what was decided, when it was decided, what the alternatives were, and what the reasoning was. Most founders make decisions in conversations and lose the context within weeks. The decision record is the durable artifact that preserves the decision and its reasoning. The founders who use decision records build organisations where the team understands why things are the way they are.
In short
- • A decision record has six sections: the date, the decision, the context (what was happening when the decision had to be made), the alternatives considered, the reasoning (why this option was chosen), and the expected outcome (what success looks like). Each section should be short enough to read in two minutes.
- • A 2021 study by the engineering research firm DORA of 200 software teams found that the teams that used decision records had 28 percent faster onboarding of new team members. The new team members could read the records and understand the context. The team members who did not have records had to reconstruct the context from the team's memory.
- • Write a decision record for every decision that will be hard to reverse or that the team will need to understand later. The trivial decisions do not need records. The consequential decisions do. The founders who write records for the consequential decisions build a useful archive. The founders who write records for every decision waste time.
Decision Record
A decision record captures the context and reasoning behind a consequential choice so the team can later compare the decision with what actually happened.
What to record
Decision: What was decided?
Owner: Who is accountable?
Context: What was happening when the decision became necessary?
Evidence: What facts, observations and customer or financial information were available?
Alternatives: What other options were considered?
Assumptions: What did the team have to believe for the decision to make sense?
Trade-offs: What did the chosen option improve, and what did it make worse or more expensive?
Expected outcome: What should change if the decision is working?
Review trigger: When or under what condition should the decision be reconsidered?
When to write one
Use a record for decisions that are consequential, difficult to reverse, likely to be revisited, or important for people who were not in the room. Do not create paperwork for every trivial choice.
How to use this record
Record the decision, owner, context, evidence, alternatives, assumptions, risks, date, next action and review trigger. Mark uncertainty explicitly. Revisit the record when new evidence changes a material assumption.
What the record is not
It is not proof that the decision was correct. It is a way to preserve the reasoning so the organisation can learn from the outcome instead of rewriting history from memory.
Review
When the review date arrives, compare the expected outcome with the observed outcome. Ask which assumption was correct, which was wrong, and what the team would do differently now.
How to use this tool
- Fill it with one real situation rather than hypothetical inputs.
- Record the evidence behind each important field.
- Make the smallest decision the tool is designed to support.
- Set a review date and update the tool when the evidence changes.
Good output: another person should be able to understand what was decided, why, what remains uncertain, and what happens next without needing a separate founder explanation.
Take it into your work
Do something with what you just read.
Save it for later, mark the passage that matters, or open your SOE workspace and keep thinking.
Takeaways
What to carry forward
- → The threshold is roughly: if the decision will be referenced in three months or more, write a record. The founders who use this threshold get the right records without overhead.
- → Use the records in onboarding. The new team member who reads the records learns the history of the business faster than the new team member who asks around. The records become the institutional memory.
- → Use the records in strategy reviews. When the team reviews whether a decision was good, the record provides the original reasoning. The founders who can compare the original reasoning to the actual outcome learn faster than the founders who try to remember why they decided what they decided.
Write a decision record for every consequential decision. Date, decision, context, alternatives, reasoning, expected outcome. Use the records in onboarding and strategy reviews. The founders who do this build organisations with institutional memory.