Ever find yourself in a situation where the why behind architectural design decisions are forgotten? “This was dumb – why did we do this?” And then the search begins – where, when, why, who contributed?

If you are lucky, it’s easy to find and read meeting outcomes — tl;dr begone. Imagine the ability to find decisions made – along with why/when/who, from six months ago. Bliss!

A concise one page meeting recap with essential nuggets at the top helps. Here’s the one page meeting recap template I use:

Meeting Title/Date:
Attendees:
Risks:
Decisions:
Actions:
Details: blah, blah, blah…

This format works because everything is visible at a single glance on one page. People can find important information quickly. Essential info at the top helps everyone see what matters most. Details at the bottom help those concerned with particulars understand the finer points. The nuggets of critical info – decisions, risks and actions, get discussed. Clarity ensues and people can get on the same page. It’s invaluable when everyone walks out of a meeting on the same page. Good meeting recaps help – if you can find them.

Real reason we open sourced everything: it’s easier to search the internet than it was to search our internal wiki

— Bryan Cantrill (@bcantrill) August 30, 2016

Unorganized wiki pages bury info. Emails get deleted. Slack and Cog are great for today’s conversations, but what about three months from now?  So — where is the sweet spot for storing important info? If you have a good strategy for stashing and finding decisions from past meetings, I’d like to hear more.