---
title: "Decision Sustainability Criteria"
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 Sustainability Criteria

<https://www.infoq.com/articles/sustainable-architectural-design-decisions/>

To define decision sustainability in detail, we derived five key criteria.

## Strategic

During decision making, someone looking  at strategic consequences should consider things such as the decisions’ long-term impact—for example, future operations and maintenance effort.

## Measurable and Manageable

You can measure and evaluate a decision’s outcome over time according to objective criteria, ideally numeric ones (as, for instance, propagated by quality attribute scenarios and workshops4). Capturing all fine-grained decisions isn’t possible, so architects must limit the decisions’ granularity to a certain level of detail (such as creating a design class). This will lead to a more sustainable set of decisions and fewer traceability links. Moreover, limiting the number of dependencies between decisions reduces changes’ ripple effect.

## Achievable and Realistic

The rationale for fitting the solution to the problem should be chosen pragmatically and made explicit. For example, architects can indicate that they have taken care to avoid over- or underengineering (that is, they should apply the “good enough” approach).

## Rooted in Requirements

Decision making should be grounded in domain-specific architecting experience and context. It should take into account the company environment as well as project requirements and constraints, including the development team’s current skills, training budget, and process.

## Timeless

Decisions should be based on experience and knowledge that won’t likely be soon outdated. For example, architects can choose platform-neutral architectural patterns or tactics.
