Views: 9
Summary – Unformalized technical choices breed technical debt, delays and silos due to a lack of transparency and coordination between IT, business teams and partners. RFCs provide a lightweight, collaborative framework to document context, alternatives, risks and impacts before implementation, delivering clear governance and a decision record to curb costly rollbacks. Solution: deploy a standardized RFC process with built-in templates (GitLab, Confluence), an agile review committee and links to proofs of concept to accelerate safe, sustainable decisions.
In an IT project, every technical choice shapes the company’s future trajectory—sometimes for years. Yet too often, these decisions arise from informal discussions, time pressure, or undocumented habits, opening the door to technical debt and internal misalignment.
Originating from the open-source world and at the heart of Internet development, the Request for Comments (RFC) practice proves to be a powerful lever for structuring technical governance and sustainably accelerating execution.
Why Structure Your Technical Decisions with RFCs
RFCs provide a lightweight, collaborative framework to document every choice before implementation. They shed light on context, options, trade-offs, and business impacts.
Initially, RFCs helped establish the foundational Internet protocols by inviting the community to comment on and refine specifications. Applied to enterprise software projects, they prevent crucial decisions from being made hastily and escaping retrospective analysis.
Implementing a standardized template systematically covers the problem statement, alternatives, risks, and long-term vision. Early visibility reduces change costs by focusing discussion when those costs are lowest.
Moreover, RFCs facilitate alignment among the IT department, business teams, and external partners. Each stakeholder has a reference point to understand why a framework, architecture, or tool was chosen.
Origins and Core Principles
RFCs emerged in the 1960s to formalize the TCP/IP protocols, paving the way for decentralized, transparent Internet governance. Their key principle is straightforward: every technical proposal is published as a public, commentable document.
In an enterprise context, the collaborative spirit remains, but the scope is defined: an author drafts the RFC, designated reviewers (architects, project managers, business leads) provide feedback, and a decision is made under predefined governance rules.
This process isn’t meant to create bureaucracy but to structure information exchange. Feedback focuses on factual elements: integration cost, maintainability, compatibility, security, and alignment with IT strategy.
Typical RFC Structure and Content
An RFC generally includes: an introduction stating the problem, business context, and constraints; a list of possible options with pros and cons; a section on impacts (technical, organizational, financial); and a recommendation or deployment plan.
Clarity relies on standardized sections: objectives, scope, stakeholders, dependencies, risks, and migration plan. This structure ensures no critical aspect is overlooked.
To speed up drafting, teams can use a template in Confluence or an internal Git repository. The key is clear language understandable by a diverse audience: architects, developers, business owners, and executives.
Benefits for Collaboration and Transparency
By shifting debate upstream—when rework costs are low—RFCs make assumptions explicit and prevent implicit decisions from creating conflicts later. They align with the principles of agile project management.
Persistent documentation becomes a shared reference, easing understanding of past choices and coordinating future changes. It also serves as institutional memory for newcomers.
Ultimately, RFCs reduce revision cycles and costly rollbacks. The organization gains responsiveness, as everyone knows which framework to consult when assessing the impact of a new technical challenge.
Example: A financial institution adopted RFCs to choose its integration middleware. Through a dozen proposals, it compared different Enterprise Service Bus and microservices architectures, documenting regulatory constraints and data volume considerations. The process revealed that microservices—often deemed too ambitious—actually offered the best balance of scalability and license-cost control, strengthening the robustness of the IT system from the design phase onward.
Streamlining Cross-Functional Decision-Making
RFCs align stakeholders around objective criteria and a shared roadmap. They formalize the framework and reinforce governance while preserving agility.
In many organizations, scattered decisions create silos: IT on one side, business on the other, and external partners often excluded. RFCs enforce a convergence point where everyone contributes expertise before implementation. They align with the principles of agile project management.
The effectiveness of an RFC heavily depends on its governance: sponsor role, review committee, arbitration method, and validation deadlines. A clear process prevents the document from becoming an object of sterile debate or “design by committee.”
Finally, tracking tools (tickets, CI pipelines, dashboards) strengthen exchange traceability, ensuring each comment is logged, addressed, or dismissed under formal criteria.
Engaging Stakeholders
One of the RFC’s strengths is its ability to involve business teams directly in the technical process. From drafting onward, the business sponsor defines success indicators and operational risks to consider.
Architects and developers detail technical constraints, while the IT department sets governance boundaries (compliance, security, budget). Each participant focuses on the sections relevant to them.
This cross-functional approach prevents “closed-door projects” and reduces resistance during rollout. Objections are addressed upfront, minimizing rework and conflicts of interest.
Governance Framework and Rapid Validation
To keep an RFC from delaying progress, define two principles: completeness criteria (mandatory sections) and decision thresholds (reviewer quorum, maximum feedback times).
An agile validation committee limited to five key members can quickly arbitrate blocking points. After that stage, only major, fact-based objections can trigger a new document version.
This process discipline ensures the RFC remains a decision-support tool, not a bureaucratic burden. It preserves individual accountability and guided autonomy for teams.
Automation and Supporting Tools
Collaboration platforms (GitLab, Confluence, SharePoint) can host templates and track RFC status like project tickets. Automated workflows notify reviewers, nudge authors, and close approved documents.
CI pipelines can be configured to integrate approved RFCs into technical documentation automatically and trigger code reviews or preliminary tests.
A centralized dashboard provides a synthesized view of all RFCs in progress, their status, and involved stakeholders—enhancing transparency and project governance.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support companies and organizations in their digital transformation
Preventing Technical Debt and Ensuring Long-Term Consistency
RFCs serve as decision memory and a knowledge-transfer tool. They prevent teams from revisiting the same debates with each evolution.
In distributed or fast-growing organizations, information flow is a major challenge. Without a structured reference, you risk repeating poor choices and increasing technical debt.
By archiving each RFC and making decision history accessible, you build a stable foundation for onboarding, audits, and future reviews. New team members quickly understand why a technical path was chosen.
This also strengthens cohesion across geographic sites or subsidiaries. Each entity can leverage RFCs to adapt global decisions to its specific context while maintaining strategic alignment.
Documentation and Organizational Memory
Every approved RFC becomes part of the company’s documentation repository—a historical milestone accessible at any time, useful for audits, regulatory changes, or major migrations.
Traceability of discussions and decisions prevents organizational amnesia: six months after a complex choice, no one needs to reconstruct the initial reasoning—it’s all recorded.
This knowledge asset also fuels internal training and post-mortems, fostering a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement.
Onboarding and Knowledge Sharing
For every new hire, access to RFCs allows understanding of technical strategy, constraints, and business objectives without scheduling numerous kickoff meetings.
This time savings frees experts for higher-value tasks and reduces errors stemming from imprecise interpretations of past choices.
RFCs can even form the basis for training modules, concretely illustrating best practices and lessons learned over multiple projects.
Alignment with IT Strategy and Standards
RFCs tie into the IT roadmap and architecture charter defined at the governance level. They ensure each proposal adheres to guiding principles (open source, modularity, security…).
Reviewers verify that every RFC aligns with internal standards, preventing isolated solutions that could weaken the overall ecosystem.
When exceptions are needed, the RFC process clearly documents deviations and mitigation measures, preserving platform coherence over the long term.
Example: A federal transportation operator introduced RFCs for its new API services. Each interface specification was drafted and validated by a cross-functional committee. In less than six months, harmonizing endpoints and data schemas cut integration incidents between business applications and external partners by 40%.
Key Conditions for Truly Effective RFCs
Lasting RFC success relies on clear scope, assigned responsibilities, and a balance between formalization and agility. Without this, they risk becoming counterproductive overhead.
Before launching an RFC process, identify decision types that require it (architecture choices, security standards, API conventions…) versus those suited for quick wins or local decisions.
Appointing a lead for each RFC ensures follow-through: gathering feedback, facilitating discussions, and monitoring deadlines. A review committee supports prompt arbitration.
Finally, documentation must not replace the need to prototype or test rapidly. RFCs should complement proofs of concept and beta versions to validate critical directions.
Defining Clear Scope
First, identify which decisions need an RFC: major architectural changes, technology stack choices, adoption of new standards, etc.
For less structural topics (internal workflow optimization, tool experimentation), choose a lighter format, such as a scoping brief or dedicated workshop.
This initial scoping prevents team overload and focuses RFCs on truly strategic, high-stake decisions.
Explicit Roles and Responsibilities
From the outset, define who writes, who validates, and who arbitrates. The lead drafts the initial version, the business sponsor sets criteria, and the technical committee conducts reviews.
Everyone understands their level of involvement: feedback, formal vote, or tacit approval after a set time.
This clarity avoids “review cascades” and speeds decision cycles while empowering key contributors.
Balancing Formalization and Prototyping
An RFC should not replace a prototype or proof of concept—it complements experimentation. After theoretical validation, build a prototype to confirm choices.
Conversely, prototyping without an RFC can lead to perpetual reinvention without documentation or governance.
Linking RFCs, prototyping, and test cycles strikes the right balance between rigor and agility, ensuring rapid, reliable production deployment.
Example: A fast-growing fintech implemented a lightweight RFC process. For each new third-party integration, a two-page document summarized scope, target API, and planned security tests. This format maintained high execution speed while ensuring choice traceability and cutting post-integration fixes by 25%.
Implementing RFCs: Accelerator for Safe, Sustainable Decisions
RFCs are neither a bureaucratic gimmick nor a burdensome constraint—they are a maturity lever for decision-making. By documenting every proposal, engaging the right stakeholders, and defining an agile validation framework, they reduce technical debt, speed execution, and strengthen IT system coherence.
More than just a template, RFCs embody the Edana philosophy: open source, modularity, avoidance of vendor lock-in, and contextualization of each solution. Our experts guide your teams in implementing this process, adapting templates, and integrating RFCs into your IT governance.
