By Anna Neovesky

Why and how you should document decisions

Decisions drive progress

In all areas of work and live, (tough) decisions need to be made to progress. The more people get involved, the more challenging it gets.

What makes a good decision?

But, how to make good decisions? First of all, there are content-related issues: What different possibilities and alternatives exist? What are the pros and cons of each alternative? Which solution gets everyone on board? What are feasible trade-offs?

Furthermore, organizational aspects are key to good and comprehensible decision making.

How to create a decision-making culture?

It is important to agree on what has to be decided as a team. It must be clear, which aspects need to be debated and decided together. It is necessary to make sure that everyone who needs to be part of a decision gets involved and that everyone who needs to know of the results gets notified.

Document decisions

Outcome and results of meetings are recorded in protocols or meeting minutes. Decisions are also noted down as part of the text, but are not the focus and get lost in the lengthy notes. Architecture decision records (ADR) are a specific solution to document decisions in software engineering and cannot be applied easily in other contexts. Decision logs, mostly written down in Excel documents, are a way to document decisions that put the decision first. But, they are stored centrally, are easy to modify (accidentally or out of purpose) and not handy enough to be incorporated in agile project management.

Loqbooq builds up a reference of who decided what, when and why

Loqbooq is a tool that keeps track of all relevant results and decisions — clutter free — and fits in your team and projects. Loqbooq stores decision logs unalterably. Even if your project ends in dispute, Loqbooq is the single source of truth everybody can refer to. As you log every major decision of your project to Loqbooq, you build up a reference of who decided what, when and why. Loqbooq is a clear documentation that your team can quickly refer to anytime.