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· Process

Writing decisions down

A lightweight decision log is the cheapest design tool I know. Here's the template I use on every engagement.

Most project pain doesn’t come from bad decisions. It comes from forgotten ones — the choice made in a meeting six weeks ago that nobody wrote down, now quietly reopened by someone who wasn’t there.

The log

Every engagement I run has a single, shared decision log. Each entry is five lines:

  1. Decision — what we chose, in one sentence.
  2. Context — why it came up.
  3. Options — what else we considered.
  4. Reasoning — why this one.
  5. Owner & date — who can change it, and when it was made.

Why it works

Writing a decision down forces you to state the reasoning, and stated reasoning is much easier to challenge, improve or defend than a vague memory. It also makes onboarding new people dramatically faster.

Theme

Presets