Core Idea
The Covering Your Assets anti-pattern occurs when architects make architecture decisions without documenting clear justification or rationale, preserving plausible deniability to deflect blame if decisions fail later.
What This Is
Definition: The “Covering Your Assets” anti-pattern represents a defensive, risk-averse approach to architecture decision-making:
- Architects prioritize personal protection over institutional knowledge
- Instead of documenting why a decision was made—the context, constraints, trade-offs considered, and expected outcomes
- Architects either document decisions superficially or avoid documentation altogether
- Implicit goal: Maintaining flexibility to later claim “I never said that would work” or “That wasn’t my decision”
How It Manifests:
- Architects present multiple options without recommending one, forcing stakeholders to choose while the architect remains neutral
- Document decisions using vague language that can be interpreted multiple ways later
- Avoid writing down decisions at all, relying on verbal discussions that leave no trail
- Extreme cases: Explicitly hedge every decision with disclaimers about what could go wrong, signaling they expect failure and want distance from it
Underlying Psychology - Fear of Accountability:
- In organizations that punish failed decisions harshly or where blame culture dominates
- Architects rationally protect themselves by avoiding definitive positions
- Cost to organization: Without clear decision rationale:
- Teams can’t learn from outcomes
- New members can’t understand why systems are structured as they are
- Decisions get repeatedly re-litigated because no one remembers why the original choice was made
Why It’s Insidious: This anti-pattern masquerades as prudence:
- Listing risks and alternatives seems responsible
- But when done to avoid commitment rather than inform decisions, it paralyzes progress
The Antidote: Architecture-Decision-Records (ADRs) that explicitly document the why behind decisions:
- Not just what was decided
- What problem it solved
- What alternatives were rejected
- What trade-offs were accepted
- Benefits: ADRs create accountability, but they also create institutional memory that prevents Groundhog Day scenarios
Healthy Decision-Making: Requires architects to:
- Make definitive recommendations
- Document reasoning transparently
- Accept that not all decisions will succeed
- Goal: Learning and iteration, not perfection
Why This Matters
This anti-pattern undermines organizational learning and creates architectural drift. Without documented decision rationale, organizations lose institutional memory — new team members inherit systems they don’t understand, and the same architectural debates recur endlessly. This wastes time and creates confusion about what the architecture actually is.
The pattern also signals deeper cultural problems. When architects feel they must avoid accountability rather than embrace learning from both successes and failures, the organization lacks psychological safety. Effective architecture requires architects who make clear recommendations, document reasoning, and accept that architecture is fundamentally about trade-offs where no choice is perfect.
Related Concepts
- Architecture-Decision-Records — The primary mechanism for preventing this anti-pattern
- ADR-Format-and-Structure — How to properly document decision rationale
- Architecturally-Significant-Decisions — Which decisions require formal documentation
- Architecture-Decision-Anti-Patterns — Related dysfunctional decision-making patterns
- Groundhog-Day-Anti-Pattern — The consequence of undocumented decisions
- Email-Driven-Architecture-Anti-Pattern — Another decision documentation failure mode
- Architectural-Governance — How to enforce decision documentation practices
Sources
- Richards, Mark and Neal Ford (2020). Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach. O’Reilly Media. ISBN: 978-1-492-04345-4.
- Chapter 19: Architecture Decisions
- Discussion of anti-patterns in architecture decision-making
- Available: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of-software/9781492043447/
Note
This content was drafted with assistance from AI tools for research, organization, and initial content generation. All final content has been reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the author to ensure accuracy and alignment with the author’s intentions and perspective.