The Decision-Centric Development Manifesto

Software Was Always Decision-Centric
We Just Forgot to Preserve the Decisions

Modern software is built on decisions.

Every feature shipped,
every bug fixed,
every rollback executed
starts with a decision.

And yet, while code is versioned, tested, and preserved,
decisions quietly disappear.

The Problem Is Not Missing Data

Software teams already collect enormous amounts of data: logs, metrics, analytics, dashboards.

When something changes, data tells us what happened.

But when something breaks or unexpectedly improves, the real question is always:

Why did we decide to do this?

That answer rarely lives in a durable place.

Development Is Already Decision-Centric

Decision-Centric Development is not a new methodology.

It does not replace: Agile, Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, Lean

It simply acknowledges a reality:

Software development is already centered around decisions. We just don't treat decisions as first-class artifacts.

Code Has Memory. Decisions Do Not.

We can diff code, revert code, audit code history.

But decisions are scattered across Slack threads, Jira comments, meeting notes, tribal knowledge, people's memory.

When people leave,
decisions leave with them.

What remains is code without context.

Every Decision Is a Hypothesis

No decision is neutral.

Every deploy implicitly says: "We believe this will improve X", "We expect metric Y to move", "We accept this tradeoff"

Whether written down or not,
every decision is a hypothesis.

Decision-Centric Development asks a simple question:

If we are already running experiments, why do we refuse to remember them?

What Decision-Centric Development Is NOT

Decision-Centric Development is not: analytics, A/B testing, user behavior tracking, dashboards, real-time monitoring

Those tools answer: "What is happening?"

Decision-Centric Development answers: "Why did this happen and should we make this decision again?"

Forgetting Decisions Has a Cost

When decisions are forgotten: teams repeat old mistakes, regressions feel mysterious, incidents seem random, discussions loop endlessly.

Teams argue opinions instead of examining past evidence.

Not because data is missing, but because context is.

Memory Is a Competitive Advantage

Teams that preserve decision context move faster, argue less, revert with confidence, defend good decisions, avoid repeating bad ones.

Decision-Centric Development is about building organizational memory, not more dashboards.

The Principle

Code explains how.
Data explains what.
Decisions explain why.

Modern software teams need all three.

Final Thought

We don't need more tools telling us what happened.

We need systems that remember why we chose to make it happen.