How to document product decisions
Document a product decision the day you make it: the choice, the options you dropped, the customer or constraint that tipped it, and later the outcome. If it is not findable, it is not documented.
This is not a PRD. A PRD argues for building. A decision record explains why you built this and not the other forty maybes.
When it is worth writing down
Write it down when someone will ask “why aren’t we doing X?” and the honest answer today is a feeling. Roadmap direction, pricing, a killed feature, a bet you will measure in a release.
Skip the Tuesday priority shuffle.
A format that fits in one screen
Use the product decision template or these five lines:
| Field | One line |
|---|---|
| Decision | We will charge per invoice, not per seat. |
| Context | Freelancers said chasing invoices feels rude; seats scare early users. |
| Options | Seat-based (familiar, scares indies). Usage-based (fair, harder to bill). |
| Why | Exact customer sentence + runway math. |
| Outcome | Fill after ship: “reminder feature drove 2 upgrades.” |
If you only have the decision and the why, write those. Empty fields are fine. Fake completeness is not.
Where teams lose the record
The gold arrives mid-call, in the customer’s words. You nod. By the next planning meeting it is gone, and the roadmap is a graveyard of maybes nobody will close.
Jordan, in the product manager track, records a ten-second voice note after the call, turns it into a customer insight, then logs the priority decision in Memory with that quote attached. The insight resurfaces when pricing or churn comes up again.
How this maps to Scribble Flow
- Capture the quote or the “we’re not doing X” in their words - just capture.
- Convert the insight and the decision when you have ten minutes - make something of it.
- Groom Ideas weekly so the maybe-pile is honest.
- When you ship, write the outcome next to the hypothesis.
Scribble Flow does not replace your roadmap tool. It keeps the judgment that the roadmap forgot.
Longer on quotes: capture customer insights. The parent idea: decision log.
FAQ
Should every ticket have a decision record? No. Only the calls that would be expensive to reverse or re-litigate.
What if we already write PRDs? Keep them. Add a short decision record when the PRD is approved or killed, so the why is not buried in a twelve-page doc.
Where do I start in the product? Start here, then the PM track. Create a desk when you want the habit, not another template file.