Do ADRs slow teams down?

Only if you make them performative. Keep ADRs short, in-repo, and tied to PRs. We aim for 1–2 pages, timeboxed reviews, and decisions landing within a week. The time you save by not re-arguing ingress or CI every quarter dwarfs the writing cost.

How do we handle exceptions to the paved road?

Treat exceptions as first-class but rare. Require a lightweight ADR for the exception, a sunset date, and a plan to converge. Track them with a label like `adr-exception` and report counts monthly.

What tools do we need to start?

Almost none. A Markdown ADR template, `CODEOWNERS`, `pre-commit`, `conftest` for policies, and a template repo. Add `Backstage` scaffolder when you’re ready to scale scaffolding organization-wide.

We already have a platform team—why add ADRs?

Platforms drift without a paper trail. ADRs make platform contracts explicit so product teams can trust them, and so platform upgrades don’t hinge on tribal memory or Slack archaeology.

How do we prove ROI to leadership?

Pick 2–3 metrics before you start: incident reduction in target domains, time-to-first-PR on new services, and fleet upgrade time. Run a 60-day pilot and compare before/after. That narrative plus numbers closes the loop.

Platform-productivity · Oct 2, 2025 · 10 minute read

The ADRs and Paved Roads That Killed Drift and Made Refactors Boring

Your teams don’t need another bespoke tool—they need decisions written down and a default path that makes the right thing the easy thing. Here’s the playbook that’s actually worked at scale.

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The ADRs and Paved Roads That Killed Drift and Made Refactors Boring

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist