---
title: "Decision record template for business case"
source: Architecture Decision Records (JPH)
source_url: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/architecture-decision-record
licence: CC0-1.0
domain: engineering
subdomain: adr-examples
date_added: 2026-04-25
---

# Decision record template for business case

This ADR template emphasizes creating a business case for a decision, including criteria, candidates, and costs.


## Top-level

* Title
* Status
* Evaluation criteria
* Candidates to consider
* Research and analysis of each candidate
  * Does/doesn't meet criteria and why
  * Cost analysis
  * SWOT analysis
  * Opinions and feedback
* Recommendation


## Low-level deep dive

**Title**:

  * A short present tense imperative phrase, less than 50 characters, like a git commit message.

**Status**:

  * One of proposed, accepted, rejected, deprecated, superseded, etc.

**Evaluation criteria**:

  * Summary: explain briefly what we seek to discover and why.

  * Specifics

**Candidates to consider**:

  * Summary: explain briefly how we discovered candidates, and draw attention to any outliers.

  * List all candidates and related options; what are we evaluating as potential solutions?

  * Specifics

**Research and analysis of each candidate**:

  * Summary: explain briefly the research methods, and draw attention to patterns, clusters, and outliers.

  * Does/doesn't meet criteria and why

    * Summary

    * Specifics

  * Cost analysis

    * Summary

    * Examples

      * Licensing, such as contract agreements and legal commitments

      * Training, such as upskilling and change management

      * Operating, such as support and maintenance

      * Metering, such as bandwidth and CPU usage

  * SWOT analysis

    * Summary

    * Strengths

    * Weaknesses

    * Opportunities

    * Threats

  * Internal opinions and feedback

    * Summary

    * Examples

      * By the team, ideally written by the actual person

      * From other stakeholders

      * Quality attributes a.k.a. cross-functional requirements 

  * External opinions and feedback

    * Summary

    * Who is providing the opinion?

    * What are other candidates you considered?

    * What are you creating? 

      * Examples

        * B2B or B2C

        * external-facing or employee-only

        * desktop or mobile

        * pilot or production

        * monolith or microservices

    * How did you evaluate the candidates?

    * Why did you choose the winner?

    * What is happening since then?

      * Examples

        * How is the winner performing?

        * What % of real-world production user traffic is flowing through the winner?

        * What kinds of integrations are involved, such as with continuous delivery pipelines, content management systems, analytics and metrics, etc.?

        * Knowing what you know now, what would you advise people to do differently?

  * Anecdotes

**Recommendation**:

  * Summary

  * Specifics
