The short answer: a decision has one home, and everything else links to it instead of copying it.
Most teams don't lack documentation. They have too much of it, in too many places, and the copies drift apart. When someone asks "what did we decide?", three people point to three different places.
A simple rule set
- Decide in a thread, record it in the spec. The discussion happens in one thread. The outcome goes into the spec in one line, with a link back to the thread.
- Tickets point to the spec. A ticket describes the work, not the reasoning. The reasoning stays in the spec.
- Meetings end with a written outcome. If a meeting changed a decision, the spec changes before the meeting is over.
- Old mail becomes a record, not a to-do. Once a message has been acted on, archive it where it can be found, not where it can nag.
How to tell it's working
- A new teammate can find why a feature was cut in under a minute.
- Nobody pastes the same summary into two places.
- Status updates link to things instead of restating them.
Where Productive fits
In Productive the thread, the ticket, the spec and the meeting are linked objects in one workspace, so "one home for each decision" is the default rather than a discipline your team has to maintain.