---
title: "How to start using ADRs"
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
---

# How to start using ADRs

To start using ADRs, talk with your teammates about these areas.

Decision identification:

  * How urgent and how important is the AD?

  * Does it have to be made now, or can it wait until more is known?

  * Both personal and collective experience, as well as recognized design methods and practices, can assist with decision identification.

  * Ideally maintain a decision todo list that complements the product todo list.

Decision making:

  * A number of decision making techniques exists, both general ones and software architecture specific ones, for instance, dialogue mapping.

  * Group decision making is an active research topic.

Decision enactment and enforcement:

  * ADs are used in software design; hence they have to be communicated to, and accepted by, the stakeholders of the system that fund, develop, and operate it.

  * Architecturally evident coding styles and code reviews that focus on architectural concerns and decisions are two related practices.

  * ADs also have to be (re-)considered when modernizing a software system in software evolution.

Decision sharing (optional):

  * Many ADs recur across projects.

  * Hence, experiences with past decisions, both good and bad, can be valuable reusable assets when employing an explicit knowledge management strategy.

Decision documentation:

  * Many templates and tools for decision capturing exist.

  * See agile communities, e.g. M. Nygard's ADRs.

  * See traditional software engineering and architecture design processes, e.g. table layouts suggested by IBM UMF and by Tyree and Akerman from CapitalOne.

For more:

  * The steps above are adopted from the Wikipedia entry on [Architectural Decision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_decision)
