What is the most useful way to document assessment of technological choices for a business problem?

Question

I would like to know if there are any templates for doing this in a clear and concise way to give the gist of the application and its inner workings and how it meets the business needs. I do not want to write a mythological story so looking for any new ways of doing this.

Answer 1

Consult Eric Evans' "Domain Driven Design". At the end of the day, you're going to have to use your experience and judgment - and that of your team - to make the design decisions big and small, but Evans recommends formulating a one-page manifesto, written in business terms, to share with biz types that explains the value of your view of the domain to the business.

Answer 2

Mostly this is about documenting what you actually need from the system. You can't make a good choice if you don't know what you need.

Here is a doc-style approach.

This is a decision matrix approach outline. The formatting is rough, but this is a good approach. This one has better formatting, but is not about software (it doesn't really matter).

Answer 3

I'm not exactly sure if this is what you are asking for, but check out this paper. It's a sample implementation of the CMMI's "Decision and Analysis Resolution" process area. It basically documents a method for comparing alternatives, reaching a decision, and documenting that decision.

The SEI's site has the original definition of DAR (see page 181), as well as a pretty good presentation about it. You have to realize that their whole goal is to help companies define their processes, not to push a particular process. So the documents you find there tend to be pretty high level, discussing the goals that your process should achieve and the specific practices that should be covered.