An architecture Decision should still be readable next year.

Stay, move a workload, buy a managed service, or postpone. The owner is usually an architect or engineering lead. Security and operations review blast radius.

Reproduced workload characteristics beat vendor benchmarks. Teams disagree about lock-in, cost, and who gets paged. Those disagreements belong on the record.

Champion defends the preferred architecture. Challenger attacks operations and exit. Strategist may propose a thinner path. Inspector marks unreproduced benchmarks. Judge scores time to value with this team.

Reproduced workload characteristics beat vendor benchmarks. Champion defends the preferred architecture. Challenger attacks operations and exit. Inspector marks unreproduced numbers. The Human Decision can still stay when hiring will not land, and both the Verdict and that override remain on the record so later teams inherit the constraint, not only the diagram.

Champion and Challenger test the case, Inspector checks the evidence, and Judge records the Verdict for the Decision Owner.

Keep the current boundary, split a service, or buy a managed substitute. Write the exit. If the Verdict favors split and the Human Decision stays because hiring will not land this half, both remain on the record.