Integration decisions

Use this template for a concrete product-to-product or product-to-external-system integration. Store the completed record at the classification required by its topology, identity, and data details.

Decision record

Decision	Questions
Scope	What outcome is enabled, and which actions are explicitly excluded?
Product boundaries	Which peer product owns each responsibility?
Versions	Which immutable provider, consumer, schema, and content versions are approved?
Identities	Which human and workload identities cross the boundary, and how are they revoked?
Data	Which fields cross, who owns them, and what are their classification and lifecycle?
Authorization	Which action, target, time, and concurrency limits apply?
Availability	Which dependencies and failure domains affect the outcome?
Failure handling	Are retries idempotent? What is the safe stop after partial completion?
Verification	How do provider and consumer independently prove the intended outcome?
Recovery	Who chooses retry, rollback, restore, repair, or forward recovery?
Observation	Which signals show interface health without leaking protected content?
Retirement	How are credentials, data, routes, automation, and alerts removed?

Compatibility is two-sided

A provider's supported version does not prove that a consumer supports the same interface. Verify both release contracts and test the exact version pair. Pin schemas and content as well as binaries; a processing-rule or inventory change can alter behavior without a component upgrade.

Retry only with defined semantics

Retries can duplicate state-changing work or widen an incident. Document a stable request identity, timeout ownership, maximum attempt policy, partial completion behavior, and independent target check. When these are unknown, stop and investigate rather than treating retry as recovery.

Evidence boundary

A public architecture can describe the decision method. Completed records may contain internal endpoints, identities, customer context, failure modes, and risk decisions and therefore remain in the approved private documentation and evidence system.

Return to the portfolio architecture or review the security model.