If your team already uses SAP LeanIX or Ardoq, I would test its decision workflow before buying another system. I say that as a business architect and the founder of Traceway.
Enterprise architecture tools help you understand the relationships among business capabilities, applications and technology, and plan how those relationships should change. For an application retirement or a technology-standard exception, that context is part of the reasoning. Keeping the decision close to it can be a good choice.
These tools also do more with decisions than their category label might suggest.
SAP LeanIX documents architecture decisions with rationale, options and links to affected fact sheets. Its lifecycle includes stakeholder review, acceptance, rejection and supersession. SAP also describes collaborative review and approval or rejection by decision-makers. Those are useful capabilities for a team deciding how its architecture should change. SAP LeanIX architecture decisions, working with decisions.
Ardoq's Architecture Records explicitly cover why a decision was made, which alternatives were considered, who approved it and when it should be reconsidered. The records sit within its EA knowledge graph. Its exception-request playbook describes a configured process for Architecture Review Board review, application-owner notifications and action before an exception expires. Running this process requires the relevant roles, application ownership, surveys and broadcasts to be configured. Ardoq Architecture Records, exception-request process.
Start with a decision your team actually needs to make
Choose an application retirement, a standards exception or a vendor renewal from your own work. Bring the options, the evidence and the people who have a stake in it. Include the business owner and whoever carries the cost or risk, as well as the architect and the delivery owner.
Have those people use the workflow they would use after purchase. Who writes the proposal? Where does disagreement go? Who has authority to approve it? Ask the approver to identify the version being approved, then ask someone else to find the rationale and rejected alternatives without help from the author.
Keep going after approval. Change an assumption that mattered to the choice. Check whether the original record remains understandable, who decides that another review is needed, and what happens to the resulting work. A maintained decision has a life after the meeting that settled it.
Architecture context can help here. SAP LeanIX documents keeping a specific diagram version embedded in a decision, preserving the architecture state it describes. Ardoq documents change history in its Audit Log, with access and retention conditions. These are useful starting points for a demonstration of the evidence your reviewers need. SAP LeanIX diagrams in decisions, Ardoq Audit Log.
Then try a decision whose ownership sits elsewhere, such as a funding priority or a commercial exception. Either platform may support that workflow through configuration. Ask the vendor to show what is already supplied, what your team must model or configure, and what takes place in another system. Confirm the plan, permissions and integrations you would actually buy.
Pay particular attention to the people who will maintain the record. If business and delivery owners can participate and the next reviewer can recover the evidence, the workflow may already meet the need. Adding another record would need a clear reason.
Where I would consider a separate decision system
I built Traceway around the decision itself: its rationale, alternatives, human approval and links to strategy and delivery. Its built-in AI gives people a conversational way to draft and refine a decision; people review the record and retain approval authority. How Traceway records decisions.
I would consider a separate decision system when the organisation wants a common workflow for consequential decisions across functions, and the existing setup leaves specific work unresolved. That might be approval authority, maintaining the approved record after a change, or finding the reason for work that is already under way. Those are requirements to demonstrate in each candidate product, including Traceway.
An EA repository can remain the place for architecture relationships while another system holds the agreed decision. If you choose that arrangement, settle where the authoritative record lives, who maintains it and how the links stay useful. Two editable copies of the same decision can leave the next reviewer with more uncertainty.
If the architecture tool passes the test, keep the decision there. If a separate system earns its place, it should do so by completing a workflow your team needs, with evidence you can retrieve. That is the standard I would bring to a Traceway demo too.