technical-decision-making

name	technical-decision-making
description	Master technical decision-making, architecture choices, technology evaluation, technical roadmaps, and technical strategy for engineering teams. Use when making architectural decisions or evaluating technologies.

Technical Decision Making Skill

Quick Start

Effective technical decisions balance multiple factors: team capability, business goals, scalability, cost, and risk.

Architecture Decision Record (ADR) Template

# ADR-001: [Title]
Date: [Date]
Status: [Proposed/Accepted/Deprecated]

## Context
[Explain the issue requiring decision]
[Background and constraints]

## Options Considered
### Option A: [Description]
- Pros: ...
- Cons: ...
- Effort: ...
- Risk: ...

### Option B: [Description]
- Pros: ...
- Cons: ...
- Effort: ...
- Risk: ...

## Decision
[Chosen option and why]
[Trade-offs accepted]

## Consequences
[Positive outcomes]
[Negative outcomes]
[Future implications]

Technology Evaluation Framework

Criteria Weight Decision
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Team expertise       30%   ★★☆
Ecosystem maturity   25%   ★★★
Community support    15%   ★★★
Performance         20%   ★★☆
Cost                10%   ★★★
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total Score                ★★★

Recommendation: [Based on scores]

Core Concepts

Architecture Patterns

• Monolithic: Single codebase, simple for small teams
• Microservices: Independent services, complex but scalable
• Serverless: Event-driven functions, pay-per-use
• Event-Driven: Asynchronous communication
• API-First: Design APIs before implementation

Design Principles

• Single Responsibility Principle
• Separation of Concerns
• DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself)
• KISS (Keep It Simple)
• YAGNI (You Aren't Gonna Need It)

Technology Evaluation

1. Define requirements (must-have vs. nice-to-have)
2. List alternatives
3. Evaluate against criteria
4. Assess team capability
5. Calculate cost and effort
6. Evaluate risk
7. Document decision

Technical Debt

• Identifies as: quick fixes, outdated code, missing tests
• Manage by: quantify impact, prioritize paydown, prevent new
• Balance: feature work vs. improvement

Tools & Templates

Tech Stack Review Checklist

• Is it still the right choice?
• Community still active?
• Security updates current?
• Performance adequate?
• Team expertise current?
• Migration cost if changing?

Technical Roadmap Template

• Q1: [Theme] - [Key initiatives]
• Q2: [Theme] - [Key initiatives]
• Q3: [Theme] - [Key initiatives]
• Q4: [Theme] - [Key initiatives]

Common Decisions

Build vs. Buy

• Build if: unique, core capability, cost-effective
• Buy if: commodity, expensive to build, faster time-to-market

Monolith vs. Microservices

• Monolith: Small teams, simple domain, high cohesion
• Microservices: Large teams, complex domain, independent scaling

Caching Strategy

• Client-side: Reduce requests
• Server-side: Reduce database load
• CDN: Geographic distribution

Resources

• "Building Microservices" - Sam Newman
• "The Art of Software Architecture" - Eoin Woods
• "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" - Martin Kleppmann
• "Release It!" - Michael Nygard
• Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)

When to Use This Skill

• Major architecture decisions
• Technology selection
• System scaling issues
• Technical debt management
• Roadmap planning
• Design reviews
• Risk assessment
• Cost optimization