The Technology bubble is something you shouldn’t take for granted, today you might be the biggest Tech firm making Billions of Money and the next day you are out on the streets without a Job. What your company needs is not to be on the losing side when the bubble bursts, you need to always know how to keep your company in the front seat and ThoughtWorks Launched Technology Radar to help you stay in that front Seat.
A Technology Radar in case you are wondering is an honest assessment of trends that are significantly impacting software development and business strategy. As a software backed company you need to have a radar to help you notice the changes in software development and how you should pay attention to them using Thoughtworks’s tested Radar.
The Technology Radar was Launched on 8th July 2014 in Chicago and ThoughtWorks Kampala will be hosting local Startups and software companies at Protea Hotel on 8th August 2014. One of the reasons I think the Technology Radar is going to be very useful for Local startups in Uganda and the big Telecoms lies in its 4 quadrants and how it addresses some of the recent problems like Privacy, costs and delayed decision making which are some of the issues that affect these companies.
I have played around with the Radar and besides the 4 themes (Churn in the JavaScript world, Microservices and the rise of the API, Conway’s Law and Re-decentralization), I feel the different Rings it has are the gist of this whole process and are the ones I feel are very helpful to both individuals and the companies. The rings include hold, asses, trial and adopt.
Hold
This is the most outer ring in the Radar and it is used to hold off on technologies that are getting a lot of buzz but still need to be proven.
This ring indicates that a technology is worth exploring with the goal of understanding how it will affect your company. This means you should invest some time in it by going to conferences to learn about such technologies.
Trial
This is for technologies that you have decided to pursue. This is where you start developing with this technology on low risk projects to better understand it.
Adopt
Lastly, ThoughtWorks has the Adopt ring and technologies and these are the ones they believe you should be using and these have been tested and are being used globally for their clients like Github, which they say should be a ‘no brainer’ for any developer.
As you can tell from this radar, many companies and startups need this radar to always asses the risk in adopting certain technologies and continually analyze a platform before they Jump in to use it and if a technology is tasted, there is no reason you should still be rigid to try because if you don’t, you will be on the losing side.
I personally think ThoughtWorks is doing everyone a favor by revealing some of their industrial standards which they have tested and learned from in more than 12 countries and I expect Tech companies in Uganda to learn from their learnings and be able to better our industry.
