# Levels of Architectural Decisions

**In short:** Architectural decisions are made at several organizational levels. Higher levels decide less and mainly set guidelines. Development teams make most decisions, so sharing them openly keeps the architecture sound.

## Explanation

Organizations make architectural decisions at different levels. Three common ones are the enterprise, the product, and the development team.

**Fewer decisions higher up.** The higher you go, the fewer decisions get made and the fewer reviews take place. An enterprise architecture board, for example, decides far less than a product-level governance board.

**Teams decide most.** Most decisions that can affect an architecture are made on the ground by development teams.

**Guidelines, not decisions.** The main job of higher governance bodies is to define guidelines, not to make decisions. Architecture principles work in a similar way. They are core ideas that guide how teams think, act, and build software. They align teams with business strategy without becoming centralized decisions. (See Architecture Principle.)

**Decentralized decisions.** In a decentralized approach, any team may decide. It first asks the people affected for advice. It then records the decision in an Architectural Decision Record (ADR). Architects facilitate this process. They do not make the decisions themselves.

**Visibility holds it together.** Because teams decide so much, decisions must be visible at all organizational levels. This helps avoid architectural compromise. Transparency in sharing decisions and seeking advice is fundamental to decentralized decision making.

## Example

Two teams work on one product. Each has a deadline. One team adds a few stored procedures (logic that runs inside the database) here and there to finish its work. Nobody outside the team hears about it. Each choice looks small. Together they can quietly erode the architecture. If the team had recorded each choice and asked affected parties for advice, others could have seen the pattern early and responded.

## Trade-offs

Letting teams decide puts most decisions close to the work. But it depends on transparency. If teams do not share their decisions, the architecture can be compromised without anyone noticing. Higher bodies that issue guidelines instead of decisions also rely on teams to read and follow them.



## Checks

- Architectural decisions made by teams are recorded, for example in ADRs, after seeking advice from affected parties.
- Decisions are visible to all organizational levels, not only to the team that made them.
- Higher-level bodies provide guidelines or principles rather than deciding everything themselves.

## Related

- [Architectural Decision](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/forces-decisions/architectural-decision.md)
- [Architectural Decision Record](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/forces-decisions/architectural-decision-record.md)
- [Architecture Principle](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/principles/architecture-principle.md)
- [Architectural Decision Management](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/forces-decisions/architectural-decision-management-practices.md)
- [Architecturally Significant Decision](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/forces-decisions/architecturally-significant-decision.md)
- [Architecture Decay](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/fundamentals/architecture-decay.md)
- [arc42 Architecture Decisions](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/documentation/arc42-architecture-decisions.md)

## Sources

- [Architectural Decisions | Why Software Architecture is Important and Essential Activities | InformIT](https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=3128836&seqNum=2) — informit.com, accessed 2026-11-09
- [Empowering Teams: Decentralizing Architectural Decision-Making - InfoQ](https://www.infoq.com/articles/empowering-decentralizing-architectural-decision-making/) — infoq.com, accessed 2026-11-09