| 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
- Define requirements (must-have vs. nice-to-have)
- List alternatives
- Evaluate against criteria
- Assess team capability
- Calculate cost and effort
- Evaluate risk
- 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- Identifies as: quick fixes, outdated code, missing tests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
