How to use the Technology Radar

Introduction

Technology is moving fast and new technologies and innovations appear continuously.

It's essential for a development and technology company such as ThoughtLabs to constantly improve and keep track with the latest useful innovations. It is important to openly look for innovations and new technologies and to question established technologies and methods every now and then.

But, it is also important to wisely choose which technologies to use in our daily work and in the different projects we are carrying out. As we all know: There is no silver bullet.

What is the Technology Radar?

The Tech Radar is an overview of different technologies - from languages, frameworks, tools and patterns to platforms - that we consider new or mentionable.

The radar therefore doesn't provide an overview of all established technologies - but it focuses on items that have recently gained in importance or changed.

How it is created?

The items in the technology radar are raised by the different teams and therefore a lot of the items are related to the work and challenges the teams face in the different projects. In fact, we don't include anything on the radar, which we haven't already tried ourselves at least once.

There have been a lot of valuable discussions in different expert groups about the classification and details of each of technologies and innovations. And the result of all this can be found in the latest technology radar.

How should it be used?

The radar acts as an overview of technologies that we think everyone in the teams should currently know about. Its goal is to act as a guide and inspiration for the daily work in the teams. Its purpose is also to provide helpful information and a bird's-eye perspective - so that decisions can be taken with a much deeper understanding of the subject matter. This results in more-informed and better-aligned decisions.

We also hope that developers outside of ThoughtLabs find the information in our technology overview inspirational.

We group or categorise the items in 4 quadrants - (sometimes, when it's not 100% clear where a item belongs, we choose the best fit).