Last updated on February 13th, 2021 at 06:41 pm
The Technology Radar is a document produced twice a year by ThoughtWorks Technology Advisory Board (TAB) to track technologies.
The Radar is graphical in nature, and presents the technologies being tracked in quadrants and rings. The quadrants represent different categories: techniques, tools, platforms and languages and frameworks. The rings indicate what stage in an adoption lifecycle the TAB thinks they should be in.
If ThoughtWorks is building a technology radar, why then create my own radar?
As architects, we feel overwhelmed by all the technologies popping up at very fast pace. How can keep up with all these changes?
Building your own Radar may really help to give you a direction on what you need to put your focus on. As stated by the authors of the book Fundamentals of Software Architecture : “Architects should treat their technology portfolio like a financial portfolio: in many ways, they are the same thing. What does a financial planner tell people about their portfolio? Diversify!”
What you should have in your radar?
- Some of the technologies that are widely in demand
- Technologies being used by your company or that will be used in the near future so that you will be in a good position when your company will adopt them.
And avoid to pick a lot of technologies on ad hoc basic just because they are “cool”.
How to build my own technology radar?
Since 2016, ThoughtWorks released an online tool to help architects and developers to building their own technology radar. All you need to do is to create your Google spreadsheet, enter the technologies you are tracking (using the same format than this example) and use the link of your spreadsheet as an input in the following page to generate your visual radar.