This guide introduces the architectural decision records (ADR) process for software engineering projects. ADRs support team alignment, document strategic directions for a project or product, and reduce recurring and time-consuming decision-making efforts.

During project and product development, software engineering teams need to make architectural decisions to reach their goals. These decisions can be technical, such as deciding to use the command query responsibility segregation (CQRS) pattern, or process-related, such as deciding to use the GitFlow workflow to manage source code. Making these decisions is a time-consuming and difficult process. Teams must justify, document, and communicate these decisions to relevant stakeholders.

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