Getting stuff down in writing is a good step; crucial for sure. But the process/ritual of decision logs doesn’t necessarily get you great analysis or effective outcomes. Two stories:

… or if your team uses arguments such as “let’s use X because Microsoft uses it too”, “let’s do X because everyone else does”, or “I used it in my previous project and it worked well, so let’s use it here too” then your decisions are likely suboptimal in the long term.

I’ve read decision logs and design docs that have included this kind of reasoning. Many meetings, everyone gets their say, it’s all written down. One time, I arrived a year or two into a project and I could indeed see how exactly they came to the decision that they did. The problem was that the reasoning was super weak. Over-emphasis on process, little on problem solving skills.

Other teams I’ve been on were fantastic problem solvers but super sloppy. If the right people were around, in the same room, they could solve things more cleanly in a fraction of the time of some company 10x the size. But for new staff, or if those key people were not around: chaos!

I guess my conclusion is that effective decision-making comes down to balancing a whole bunch of different behaviour.

In short: software is tricky.