Inspirational Technology Radar Examples
In this article you will find inspiring examples of different companies documenting their technology management with a technology radar and making the results public.
A good tool for active technology management is the technology radar. Use a technology radar to monitor all technologies relevant to your business. The technology radar helps you identify technologies that you should assess, try, adopt, or hold or reduce in your business. It tracks any applied technology in your company, on your product team, or for you personally through its lifecycle. From a potentially identified - hyped - technology to an old technology that is being phased out.
Technology Radar real-world examples from various engineering companies help me keep track technology trends. So I am always looking for inspiring technology radar practice examples.
This page currently contains the following examples of technology radars:
- ThoughtWorks Technology Radar
- Digitec Galaxus Tech Radar
- Zalando Tech Radar
- bbv Technica Radar
- Software AG Technology Radar
- Adesso Technology Radar
- AOE Technology Radar
- DB Systel Digital Trend Radar
- O'Reilly Technology Trend Radar
- My technology radar
This page is constantly updated with new examples.
Tip: The following article describes why you should manage your company's technology lifecycle with a technology radar👇
Patrick Roos
ThoughtWorks Technology Radar (the "original")
ThoughtWorks is a leading global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design, and software engineering to enable enterprises and technology disruptors across the globe to thrive as modern digital businesses [Source ThoughtWorks].
Digitec Galaxus Tech Radar
The Swiss online market leader digitec is a specialist for IT, consumer electronics and telecommunications. As the largest online department shop in Switzerland, Galaxus carries a constantly growing range of products for almost all everyday and non-everyday needs. Always at great prices and delivered reliably, quickly and free of shipping costs.
https://www.galaxus.ch/techradar/
The interesting part of the Digitec Tech Radar is the rings. The rings are different from the "original" ThoughtWorks Tech Radar:
- Trial
I interpret the trial ring here as the "assess" ring from the original technology radar. - Hold
(same) - Specific
I interpret the specific ring here as specific to some teams. - Adopt
(same)
Zalando Tech Radar
Zalando is a major online fashion platform from Germany and is often considered one of the biggest successes in the European e-commerce industry.
The Zalando Tech Radar has the described rings, but the categories are different:
- Datastores
- Data Management
- Infrastructure
- Languages
From the focus of the Zalando Tech Radar, I interpret that Zalando has major technical challenges in data management, and therefore closer monitoring of technologies in this area is necessary. They describe the use of their technologies in their tech blog.
bbv Technica Radar
bbv Software Services is a Swiss software and consulting company with around 300 experts who all pursue one goal: To realise the visions of their customers together.
bbv has initiated its technology radar. The radar differs from the original ThoughtWorks Technology Radar in the following ways:
Rings
They use the following lifecycle rings:
- Use: This technology can be used in any case
- Evaluate: "New kid on the block", evaluate whether it might be useful to use the technology.
- Rethink: Technologies and framework conditions change and sometimes have to be looked at anew.
Quadrants
They use the following categories:
- Concept or theme
- Tools
- Method or technique
- Libraries, Frameworks, Programming Languages
Software AG Technology Radar
Software AG is one of the global market leaders for software solutions for enterprises and related services. Its products make it possible to analyse and manage business processes and control IT infrastructures.
Software AG’s Office of the CTO is continuously evaluating emerging trends and technologies. The Software AG Technology Radar is making a condensed version of the results publicly available. [Source Software AG]
The categories of the Software AG's technology radar differs from the original ThoughtWorks Radar. Also like the original ThoughtWorks technology radar, they categorize the technologies. Following the structure of the Software AG Marketecture, the Technology Radar is divided into six sections:
Value propositions:
- Connected business experience
- Digital business excellence
- Ecosystem driven economy
Technology foundation:
- Hybrid-and multi-cloud infrastructure
- Agile devops and continuous delivery
- Platform enabled ecosystems
Additionally, they specified the "Hold" ring to "Hold / Reduce" with the following description:
"For most companies, we recommend against this technology. Reasons may include a current lack of maturity, current little market adoption endangering sufficient future support, or that we currently see a better alternative. All of this can of course change over time." [Source Software AG]
Adesso Technology Radar
With a team of more than 5,300 employees at 41 locations, adesso is one of the leading IT service providers in the German-speaking region and work every day to successfully bring our customers' projects to their goals. Learn more about adesso here.
The adesso Technology Radar currently contains well over 200 assessments for methods and techniques, tools, platforms, languages and frameworks in the following technologies:
- Java
- Microsoft
- Javascript
- Cloud
- PHP
- SAP
- Mobile
The quadrants are similar to the "original" ThoughtWorks Technology Radar:
- Methods & Techniques
- Languages & Frameworks
- Tools
- Platforms
The assessment scale is similar to the bbv Technology Radar:
- Use
- Evaluate
- Reconsider
AOE Technology Radar
AOE is a provider of software engineering in various industries such as aviation, fintech, healthcare and many more.
They've agreed on a rough categorization of "technology blips" (as we call the entries in the technology radar):
Languages & Frameworks
They've accommodated both development languages (like Scala or Golang) and low-level development frameworks (like Play or Symfony) that are useful for implementing custom software of all kinds.
Methods & Patterns
Here they put information on methods and patterns concerning development, continuous x, testing, organization, architecture, etc.
Platform & Operations
This quadrant bundles technologies around the operation of software and infrastructure-related platforms, tools and services.
Tools
Here they present various software tools - from small helpers to larger software projects.
According to their assessment and evaluation, they categorize the blips into four levels, similar to the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar:
- Assess
- Trial
- Adop
- Hold (separate)
They've published their technology radar as OSS:
AOEpeopleAOEpeopleDB Systel Digital Trend Radar
DB Systel GmbH develops and operates IT and digitization solutions for the business units of Deutsche Bahn AG. The company was formed in August 2007 through the merger of the subsidiaries DB Systems and DB Telematik.
DB Systel monitors technology trends with its own "Digital.Trend.Radar".
They have the following categories:
- Technology
- Employees
- Processes
- Data
Rrings describes the maturity of the trends. They distinguish between:
- Emerging
- Volatile
- Standardizing
- Established
Each trend has their business value tag:
- Small
- Medium
- Large
O'Reilly Technology Trends Radar
My technology radar
You can find my technology radar under the following link 👇
Patrick Roos
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