Tech Decisions
Structured trade-off references for consequential engineering and product decisions. The kind where context matters more than ideology, and the honest answer is almost always 'it depends, and here's on what'.
Entries
38
Classes
05
Classes
- architecture
- product-delivery
- team-operations
- quality-delivery
- ai-systems
Each entry in this catalog is a trade-off, not a recommendation. Two concrete options are laid out side by side with their real conditions, costs, hidden costs, and the failure modes each invites when misapplied. The grid below groups decisions by the axis of the call (architecture shape, delivery posture, team model, quality bar, AI systems), not by the kind of team making it. Card weight reflects severity if wrong on a five-step grayscale ramp: paper at low, near-black at critical.
-
Severity if wrong
- low
- medium
- medium-high
- high
- critical
Chip = card fill on the grid.
-
Frequency
How often this decision actually shows up in real engineering work: from rare architectural bets to universal team questions.
increasing Not a point on the scale. A trend. Flags decisions whose prevalence is rising (often AI-era).
- rare
- occasional
- common
- very common
- universal
-
Reversibility
How hard it is to undo this decision once taken: from cheap to walk back, to a one-way door you'll live with for years.
- easy
- easy-moderate
- moderate
- moderate-hard
- hard
-
Confidence
How sure we are the framing here holds up across teams: provisional vs. repeatedly observed trade-offs.
- low
- medium
- medium-high
- high
Architecture
09 decisionsMonolith vs Microservices
Usually a team-shape and operational-maturity decision disguised as an architecture preference.
Modular Monolith vs Distributed Services
Usually a boundary-quality and deployment-independence trade-off.
REST vs GraphQL
Usually a consumer-shape and schema-governance decision, not just an API fashion choice.
SQL vs NoSQL
Usually a query-shape and consistency decision, not a scalability slogan decision.
Sync Communication vs Event-Driven
Usually a coupling, resilience, and process-clarity decision-not just a latency or style choice.
Shared Database vs Service-Owned Data
Usually a coupling and boundary-enforcement decision.
Strong Consistency vs Eventual Consistency
Usually a business-truth and user-expectation decision, not just a storage decision.
Batch vs Real-Time Processing
Usually a freshness-vs-complexity decision.
Edge Logic vs Centralized Backend Logic
Usually a latency-and-distribution decision with governance consequences.
Product Delivery
09 decisionsBuild vs Buy
Usually a control-vs-focus decision, not an engineering pride decision.
Speed vs Robustness
Usually a risk-timing trade-off, not a values trade-off.
Scope Flexibility vs Date Certainty
Usually a commitment-shape decision, not a planning-format decision.
Platform First vs Product First
Usually a leverage-timing decision, not a maturity decision.
Rewrite vs Refactor
Usually a migration-discipline decision, not a cleanliness decision.
Generic Solution vs Case-Specific Solution
Usually an abstraction-timing decision.
One-Way Door vs Two-Way Door Rollout
Usually a reversibility and blast-radius decision.
Customization vs Standardization
Usually a local-fit vs long-term coherence decision.
Experimentation vs Operational Stability
Usually a learning-speed vs trust-preservation decision.
Team Operations
06 decisionsCentral Platform Team vs Embedded Enablement
Usually a leverage-distribution decision.
Specialist Teams vs Cross-Functional Teams
Usually a coordination-vs-depth decision, not a modernity decision.
Strong Ownership vs Shared Ownership
Usually an accountability-vs-flexibility decision.
Local Team Autonomy vs Central Governance
Usually a flow-vs-coherence decision.
Documentation First vs Tacit Coordination
Usually a scale-and-memory decision.
Synchronous Collaboration vs Async-First Collaboration
Usually a speed-of-alignment vs depth-of-focus decision.
Quality Delivery
06 decisionsTest Pyramid vs Heavy End-to-End
Usually a feedback-speed vs system-confidence decision.
CI Gate Strictness vs Developer Throughput
Usually a trust-in-automation vs speed-of-iteration decision.
Feature Flags vs Branch-Based Release Isolation
Usually a rollout-control vs codebase-complexity decision.
Backward Compatibility vs Faster Evolution
Usually a consumer-protection vs platform-evolution decision.
Convention over Configuration vs Flexibility
Usually a simplicity-vs-variance decision.
Manual Review Depth vs Automation Dependence
Usually a human-context vs scalable-consistency decision.
Ai Systems
08 decisionsAI-Assisted Development vs Manual-Only Development
Usually a judgment-and-verification decision, not a productivity ideology decision.
Model API vs Self-Hosted Model
Usually a control-vs-complexity decision.
RAG vs Fine-Tuning
Usually a knowledge-grounding vs behavior-shaping decision.
Prompt Layer vs Workflow/Tooling Layer
Usually a wording-vs-system-design decision.
Human-in-the-Loop vs Full Automation
Usually a trust-boundary and consequence-of-error decision.
Fast AI Adoption vs Governance-First AI Adoption
Usually a learning-speed vs control-readiness decision.
Broad AI Enablement vs Restricted High-Trust AI Use
Usually a leverage-distribution vs risk-surface decision.
Synthetic Evaluation vs Real-World Evaluation
Usually a speed-of-measurement vs truth-of-measurement decision.