Making informed & Up-to-date Technology Choices
Managing technology selection can be a challenging process and can incur great costs if made incorrectly.
New technologies emerge every day, some technologies grow to become disruptive such as the advent of containers which has had a great influence on software development and architectures while other technologies may be met with great hype but not last for long.
Once a technology goes out of support then it no longer receives security patches leaving systems that depend on them vulnerable and presenting many other issues.
It can be difficult to predict the direction a technology is taking, however, one approach that provides insight into this, is the utilization of Technology Radars, such as the Thoughtworks Technology Radar.
The Throughtworks technology radar is maintained by a group of 17 senior technologists at Thoughtworks (known as TAB) and is updated twice a year.
Technologies plotted on the radar are organized into quadrants and rings. The rings indicate the recommended adoption stages while quadrants are categorizations of different types of technologies such as Frameworks, Tools, Platforms, etc…
The radar also represents how adoption recommendations have changed in between radar reviews for each of the technologies plotted within.
Technologies that are plotted closer to the centre of the radar have a high adoption recommendation rating while more caution is advised for technologies furthest away from the centre.
Below are definitions of each of the rings:
Adopt: Strong suggestion to adopt where appropriate
Trial: Worth experimenting on systems that can handle the risk.
Assess: Worth exploring to determine the effect on an enterprise.
Hold: Proceed with caution.
Enterprises are free to create model their own technology radars to drive technology selection; Other tech radars exist out there inspired by the Thoughtworks Tech Radar such as the Zolando Tech Radar which supplement each technology with information such as pros and cons.