Introduction to the SFW TechRadar

The TechRadar collates the themes of the month from our various areas of interest (Back-End and Modern Architectures, Front-End, User Research and DevOps).

Access the latest version of the TechRadar here

The concept of the radar is borrowed from ThoughtWorks who produce their own analysis of the industry on a quarterly basis. The radar is all about tracking interesting things, that are relevant to us as an organisation, primarily doing business with the UK Government abiding by GDS principles. Each item is referred to as a ‘blip’. We organize the blips onto the radar using two categorizing elements: the quadrants and the rings. The quadrants represent different kinds of blips. The rings indicate how “close” these blips are - what stage in an adoption life-cycle we think they should be in.

The four quadrants are:

• Languages and Frameworks – The libraries and languages we should be using to help complement our deliveries to enable us to deliver faster and more effectively
• Tools – Software development tools, eg version control systems, or continuous delivery tooling; User Experience tooling, such as surveying software or tooling for qualitative/quantitative analysis, or more generic categories of tools, eg project collaboration software.
• Platforms are things that we build software on top of: for example, virtual platforms like the JVM or generic kinds of platforms like hybrid clouds.
• Techniques include elements of a software development process, such as experience design; and ways of structuring software, such as micro-services.

Each ‘blip’ on the graph represents something for an item which has or should have some business value in us either adopting, trialling, assessing or holding off on.

• The Adopt Ring represents blips that we should start or already be using now. That’s not to say you should use these for every project; any tool should only be used in appropriate context. However, we do think that a blip in the adopt ring represents something where there is no doubt that it’s, has business value for us and is mature for use. As the radar is more for tracking upcoming things, once Blips have proven their maturity and adoption across SFW, they will then drop off the radar.
• The Trial Ring is for blips that we think are ready for use, but not as completely proven as those in the adopt ring. These are items that we should seek opportunities to evaluate through running on Internal Projects or testing out in a low-risk environment (for example as a small component of a larger project)
• The Assess Ring are things that we should look at closely. We believe there is potentially some business value in us using these items, but we should check them out first to assess their maturity, relevance, and in some case make a decision about which substitutional item we adopt (for example typically choose one of Puppet or Chef not both
• The Hold Ring is for things which are either getting attention but are not ready for use (eg not mature or too big a step at this moment in time), or for those which we may not need to invest as much time in due to low opportunity for use in the near future.