Write your first Architecture Decision Record tonight: one page, ten minutes, and use it at work tomorrow. It's the cheapest senior signal you can manufacture.
A team picked NoSQL with no written rationale. The lead left six months later. Eighteen months after that, a rewrite cost £200K. The choice may have been right. Nobody could tell.
One page. Ten minutes to write. Lives in the repo forever. Each part has a job; if a part is missing, the document fails the test.
10K TPS peak writes. Predictable access (by id, by customer). Isolated service. Team strong on PostgreSQL. Ship in 6 weeks.
We will use PostgreSQL, not DynamoDB.
+ Team moves fast, no learning curve + Full ACID, regulatory requirement for payments + Ad-hoc reporting queries trivial later − Horizontal scaling work past 100K TPS − Accepted risk at current 10K TPS peak − Revisit at 50K TPS sustained
↑ the revisit condition is what makes this a staff-level document
Write 2–3 sentences for each part. Include at least one +, one −, and a revisit condition. Drop your answer in chat.
Six weeks. Twelve live sessions. Three ADRs with real stakeholder pressure and direct feedback on your writing. Small cohort so feedback is actually personal.