/approach/template
Start your Architecture Design Document.
An editable Word template built around the eight steps of my architectural approach. Use the questions to record the decisions, trade-offs and evidence behind your design.
Architecture Design Document template
A concise starting point with short guidance, editable tables and space for your own diagrams and references. Expand it to fit your project.
What the template contains
The same eight steps as the approach and the document checker, with focused questions and fields for your design, supporting evidence and unresolved points.
Understand the context
Describe the business problem, processes, users, stakeholders, scope and boundaries before choosing a solution.
Define the requirements
Connect business outcomes to prioritised requirements, measurable acceptance criteria and accountable owners.
Choose design patterns
Explain how the chosen patterns meet the requirements, which alternatives were considered and how failure is handled.
Select the technology
Justify the platform and component choices against the workload, operating constraints, cost and feasible exit options.
Engineer the guardrails
Map threats and scoped obligations to concrete controls, enforcement points, owners and verification evidence.
Agree the architecture
Bring the design views, interfaces, decisions and assumptions together in a reviewed baseline with clear approval ownership.
Guide the delivery
Trace the architecture into implementation, testing, release controls, exceptions and rollback arrangements.
Operate, learn & adapt
Define operational ownership, service objectives, monitoring, recovery and the feedback that keeps the architecture current.
Optional: an AI suitability decision record
Evaluate each proposed AI use case on its own merits. Record where AI is justified, where a simpler alternative fits better, and what remains unverified. A justified decision not to use AI is a valid outcome.
When material benefits, reliability, data boundaries or recovery arrangements remain unverified, do not assume AI is ready for use. Record the uncertainty and the evidence needed to reconsider. Prompts, filters, human review and local hosting alone do not establish correctness or security.
Decisions, risks and open points
Short registers keep the reasoning and follow-up visible: what was decided, which requirements it serves, what risk remains and who will resolve each open point.
- Architecture decisions
- Risks and assumptions
- Open points and acceptance
How to use it
- Fill in the project details and replace the guidance and placeholders with your actual design.
- Keep decisions concrete. Link requirements to decisions, responsible roles and a way to verify them.
- Add diagrams where they clarify the design. Reference supporting artefacts, and explain any section that is not applicable.
- Record uncertainties honestly, review the document with the people who own the decisions, then use the checker for an additional first read.
The template gives you a structure, not a higher score. Headings and completed fields are not evidence that a design is sound. Other document structures work with the checker too.