Ship decisions, not just features

Every sprint contains three or four decisions that aren't written down anywhere. “We agreed to cut scope on search” — said in standup, forgotten by Thursday, rebuilt next sprint. Verdo makes the decision an artifact with an owner, a rule and an outcome.

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What product teams actually decide

Not the roadmap. The dozens of smaller calls underneath it that nobody logs and everybody later disputes.

Ship or hold

The call that gets made in standup and forgotten by Thursday. Short deadline, majority rule, a named owner.

Scope in or out

The one most likely to be relitigated in the retro, and the one most worth a record of what the alternatives were.

Vendor and build-vs-buy

Expensive and hard to reverse. Three or four real contenders, a majority rule, and the owner on the record.

Hire or no-hire

Anonymous mode matters: seniority in the room skews an open vote. Consensus, so one strong objection blocks it.

Launch date

Everyone has an opinion and one person carries the consequence. Majority rule, and that person named as owner.

Feature prioritisation

Put the real candidates for the next slot side by side and pick one. The record keeps what was turned down for the next planning round.

Two rules, mapped to product reality

Pick the rule before anyone votes, so nobody argues afterwards about what the numbers meant.

Majority for the low-stakes

Which icon set, which copy variant, which of two equivalent libraries. Fast, and nobody needs to own the outcome.

Consensus for cross-functional

When engineering and design both have a veto in practice, make it explicit. If one side disagrees it does not pass — which is what would have happened anyway, two weeks later.

How it fits the sprint

  • Raise it where it came upType /verdo in #product — or react ✅ to the message that started it and Verdo drafts the decision from it.
  • Start from a template6 built in, including hire/no-hire, vendor selection, feature prioritisation and architecture decision. Save your own on Pro.
  • Set the rule and the ownerBoth visible to everyone before a single vote is cast, which is the part that stops the result being reinterpreted afterwards.
  • It closes itselfNon-voters get two DMs, the deadline fires, the rule is applied and the result posts to the channel.
  • It reaches your trackerZapier or signed webhooks on Pro push a decided decision into Jira, Linear, Asana or a project channel.
  • It gets reviewed30 days later the owner says whether it worked. That answer is on the record next to the decision.

The argument for an audit trail

“Why did we decide this?” is the most common question in a product retrospective and the hardest one to answer honestly.

Memory reconstructs decisions to make them look more deliberate than they were. A log that only records the outcome does the same thing. What makes the answer useful is the surrounding detail: what the alternatives were, who preferred which, which rule was applied, who owned it, and what the status is now — Decided, Implemented, Stalled, Superseded or Reversed.

Every mutating action writes an audit row, so the history cannot be quietly tidied up afterwards. Audit log export is planned for Business.

Frequently asked questions

How should a product team record decisions?
With the alternatives attached. A decision log that only records what was chosen answers the wrong question — the useful record shows what else was on the table, who preferred what, which rule was applied and who owned it. That is what makes “why did we decide X?” answerable in a retro six months later.
What is an audit trail on a decision?
A log of every mutating action: who created the decision, who voted, who changed its status, and when. It is the difference between a record you maintain and a record you can rely on — a Notion row can be edited afterwards with no trace, an audit row cannot.
Can decisions push to Jira or Linear?
Yes, via Zapier or signed webhooks on the Pro plan. A decision reaching Decided can open the ticket, update the epic or post to the project channel, so nobody retypes the outcome into a second system and gets it slightly wrong.
What is the 30-day outcome review for?
30 days after a decision, the owner gets one DM: Success, Partial, or Failed. One tap. It is the retrospective trigger most product teams intend to build and never do — and over a couple of quarters it tells you which kinds of decisions your team gets right and which it consistently doesn't.
Does Verdo replace an ADR?
For architecture decisions specifically, an ADR in the repo is still the right home for the reasoning — Verdo is not a document store. What Verdo adds is the part an ADR usually lacks: who actually agreed, under what rule, and whether it survived contact with production.
What does it cost for a product team?
Pro is $49 a month for the workspace, whatever the team size, and covers 500 active decisions with up to 100 participants each. One workspace per subscription, with a 7-day free trial. Card required. Cancel anytime during the trial with no charge.

Keep reading

Async decisions for distributed teams

Deciding across four timezones without a meeting or a default winner.

How to stop decisions dying in Slack

The five elements a decision needs, and a 60-second framework for running one.

Verdo for Slack

Single-choice voting, a majority or consensus rule, and a decision that closes itself.

Verdo vs Polly

Surveys and feedback versus decisions with an owner and an outcome.

Add Verdo to your product workspace.

Put this sprint's ship/cut call through it and see what the record looks like at the end.

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