The 5-Minute Tech Decision Sheet

Most tech decisions are not hard. They are just undocumented, so teams argue the same one every quarter.

This sheet fixes that. Three tools, five minutes each. Use them the next time someone says "should we just build it?"

Tool 1: The build vs buy scorecard

Answer yes or no. Count the yeses.

1. Is this part of what makes our product different to customers?

2. Will our requirements change faster than a vendor would ship them?

3. Do we already have someone who could own this for the next 2 years?

4. Is the vendor price going to scale painfully with our growth metric?

5. Would vendor lock-in here block a move we are likely to make?

6. Is the integration work close to the build work anyway?

7. Can we build a version we would be proud of in under one quarter?

8. Is our data too sensitive to hand this vendor?

9. Have we already outgrown a vendor in this category once?

10. Would building this make the team meaningfully better at our core work?

7 or more yeses: build it.

4 to 6: buy, but keep your data exportable and your interfaces thin so you can leave.

3 or fewer: buy, and do not look back. Anyone still arguing for build is arguing for a hobby.

Tool 2: The adopt / wait / skip matrix

For every shiny new technology, ask two questions: does it solve a pain we have today, and is it proven at our scale?

Proven at our scale

Not proven at our scale

Solves a pain we have today

ADOPT. Pilot on one real workload this month.

TRIAL. One spike, one week, one engineer. Kill criteria written before you start.

No pain today

WAIT. Put it on the radar. Revisit in 6 months.

SKIP. This is a conference talk, not a roadmap item.

The trap is the bottom-right box. It generates 80% of tech-adoption arguments and close to 0% of business value. Name the box out loud and the argument usually ends.

Tool 3: The one-paragraph decision record

Full ADR templates die because nobody fills them out. This one survives because it fits in a Slack message:

DECISION: We chose [X] over [Y and Z].
BECAUSE: [the one or two constraints that actually decided it].
WE ACCEPT: [the cost or risk we are knowingly taking].
REVISIT IF: [the measurable condition that reopens this].
OWNER: [name]. DATE: [date].

Write one for every decision that took more than one meeting. Six months from now, "why did we pick this?" has an answer, and the new hire stops relitigating it.

The meta-rule

A reversible decision deserves minutes. An irreversible one deserves days. Most teams spend their days on the reversible ones because those are easier to argue about.

Sort by reversibility first. Everything else gets faster.

This sheet is a Codeinate welcome gift. Two issues a week, Monday and Thursday, five minutes each. If a friend sent you this link, get your own at the homepage.