Technology Radar

The Technology Radar is all about tracking interesting things, referred to as ”blips” by Thoughtworks. The idea with this template is to allow companies, organizations, departments, and/or teams to track techniques, tools, platforms, and frameworks that might be interesting for their business and operation.

The blips — visualized in this template as sticky notes — are organized in the Radar using two categorizing elements: quadrants and rings.

• Quadrants represent different kinds of blips.

• Rings indicate what stage in an adoption lifecycle they should be in.

A blip is a technology or technique that plays a role in software development. Blips are things that are “in motion,” usually indicating increased confidence in them as they move through the rings.

The Technology Radar is forward-looking. To make room for new items, items that haven’t moved recently fade, which isn’t a reflection on their value but rather on the limited Radar real estate.

Adopt: We feel strongly that the company should be adopting these items. We use them when appropriate in our projects.

Trial: Worth pursuing. It’s important to understand how to build up this capability. This technology can be tried on a project that can handle the risk.

Assess: Worth exploring with the goal of understanding how it will affect us.

Hold: Proceed with caution.

Four tags are used to indicate movement:

1. New

2. Moved in

3. Moved out

4. No change

For more info and background on the original Tech Radar, see thoughtworks.com/radar/faq.