How should a project manager capture decisions?

Question

As a project goes through the planning and design phases, many decisions will be made. To develop with technology X instead of technology Y. To leave feature z off of the plan for this version of the release in order to hit a hard deadline. Many decisions, large and small (and sometimes the decisions about what will *not* be done are as important as decisions about what will be done).How can a Project manager best capture and share the decisions that were made so that they are not continually revisited throughout the project? Should the "why" and the "who made the decision" be documented as well? How should the project manager balance the communication of key decisions without overwhelming uninterested parties with minutiae? When is it okay to revisit a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but does not bear out in practice?

Answer 1

We use a sharepoint team site for each of our projects. The site template contains a custom sharepoint list which we use to capture decisions. Since sharepoint contains the ability to subscribe to a list, people who want to be keep up to date on decisions can subscribe to the list and receive notifications whenever an item is added / edited.