INFO Technology RadarINFO Technology Radar

How to use the INFO Technology Radar

Introduction

The INFO Tech Radar contains a high-level list of preferred technologies that we like to use for the solutions that we build for our clients. It also contains technologies that we would like to assess or trial as well as technologies that we want to put on hold. The INFO Tech Radar was built using the AOE People Tech Radar generator, and we continue to be inspired by the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar

Purpose of the INFO Technology Radar

The purpose of the INFO technology radar is:

  • To give focus on our INFO technology innovation strategy.
  • To help make technology decisions for our client teams.
  • To give guidance in the career growth paths of our technical employees
  • To share our technology strategy with our (potential new) clients and potential new employees.

Who maintains the INFO Technology Radar?

This is the responsibility of the tech and design radar working group at INFO. We will try our best to involve all relevant people at INFO where we can and try to make the radar shared by all of us. Everyone at INFO can contribute to the technology radar.

How to use the INFO Technology Radar?

The INFO tech radar contains a list of current preferred technologies for new technical solutions in our teams, as well as technologies that we would like to assess or trial. Read and use it when defining your team's technology vision for new solutions or major changes. There may be perfectly valid reasons to deviate from the INFO Tech Radar in our teams. We do ask our teams to always discuss such deviations.

Note that our tech radar is not a complete list of our preferred technologies. To keep it manageable, we only include technologies that we think are currently relevant to our teams.

Quadrants

We group the items on the tech radar in four quadrants:

  • Languages & Frameworks: programming languages and software frameworks
  • Tools: software products such as content management systems as well as software development tools
  • Techniques: architectural techniques, elements of our software development process, best practices, and such
  • Platforms: things that we build software on top of such as cloud-native platforms

Rings

Every quadrant is divided into four rings:

  • Adopt: We can clearly recommend this technology. We have used it for a longer period of time in many teams, and it has proven to be stable and useful.
  • Trial: We have used it with success and recommend having a closer look at the technology in this ring. The goal of items here is to look at them more closely, with the goal to bring them to the 'adopt' ring.
  • Assess: We have tried it, and we find it promising. We recommend having a look at these items when you face a specific need for the technology in your project.
  • Hold: This category is a bit special. Unlike the others, we recommend stopping doing or using something. That does not mean that they are bad, and it often might be ok to use them in existing projects. But we move things here if we think we shouldn't do them any more because we see better options or alternatives now.