Keep technical decisions with the team, not in your memory

EDITORIAL PRACTICE

Agree on the outcome before studying the implementation

Treat the workflow discussed below as a bounded assignment for an offshore delivery team and an AI operator. The client explains the business goal and priorities. The operator breaks the work into tasks, directs the AI, checks its output and returns unresolved decisions instead of silently inventing requirements.

Ask for a working result, evidence from the relevant checks and a short list of remaining limitations. Start with one feature or operational workflow, and compare implementation, review and ongoing support costs separately. Neither an offshore location nor the use of AI guarantees savings or quality.

Agree on a reporting cadence and escalation conditions so the client does not have to watch every step. The technical details below are acceptance topics for the delivery team to explain and verify, not a new daily workload for the client. Actual scope depends on the agreed service and access conditions.

Sources:

FROM PRIMARY SOURCES

Preserve the context that code cannot show

Microsoft describes an ADR as a record of how and why a system reached its current shape. Its purpose includes the background to a choice, rather than only the resulting implementation. Teams should decide which consequential decisions merit that treatment.

We suggest one record per decision, with the problem, constraints, alternatives, rationale and accepted drawbacks. Not every small code edit needs an ADR. Prioritize choices whose reversal would materially affect cost or operations so the writing burden remains proportionate.

Sources: [1]

EDITORIAL PRACTICE

Distinguish an AI proposal from a team decision

An AI comparison is not itself an organizational decision. Record which assumptions a responsible person checked and which option the team actually selected. Unverified performance or pricing claims should remain open questions rather than established reasons for the choice.

When handing work to an overseas team, include conditions that justify revisiting the decision, not just a translated conclusion. Growth in usage, a contract change or a new maintenance owner may matter. Understanding those conditions lets collaborators flag changed assumptions instead of waiting for a new instruction.

Sources:

EDITORIAL PRACTICE

Link earlier decisions to their successors

Overwriting an old record with today’s conclusion hides what changed. Preserve it and link to the later decision. Explain the difference between the previous constraints and current conditions without assuming the original choice was unreasonable at the time.

Check that the record connects to actual code, issues, diagrams and operational instructions. Assign an owner and a review trigger. These are editorial management practices; choosing a document format does not automatically make an architectural judgment correct.

Sources: