An ADR has three required fields: context (the situation that forced the decision), decision (what was chosen) and consequence (what was accepted as trade-off). It lives in the repository, versioned with the code. Each ADR gets a number, a descriptive title and stays immutable once accepted — if the decision changes, a new ADR supersedes the previous one. At Nextside, every project starts with 3-5 ADRs in Sprint Zero (stack, deploy, security), and new ADRs are created whenever an architectural decision is made.
GLOSSARY
ADR
What is ADR?
Architecture Decision Record. A short document that captures context, decision and consequence of a technical choice. Standard in the industry since Michael Nygard (2011).