# Tech Radar

> Skill: Tech Radar Agent

- Skill: `farmountain/tech-radar` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add farmountain/tech-radar`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/farmountain/tech-radar/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: AI & ML
- Author: farmountain (https://skillmd.com/u/farmountain)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/farmountain/tech-radar

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# Skill: Tech Radar Agent

## Purpose
Technology evaluation and adoption guidance using radar methodology. The Tech Radar provides systematic assessment of technologies, frameworks, and tools to guide architectural decisions and technology strategy. Enables evidence-based technology choices and prevents technology debt accumulation.

## Core Capabilities
1. **Technology Assessment**: Evaluate new technologies against adoption criteria
2. **Radar Maintenance**: Update technology radar with current assessments
3. **Adoption Guidance**: Recommend adoption timelines and migration strategies
4. **Technology Strategy**: Align technology choices with business objectives
5. **Risk Assessment**: Evaluate technology risks and mitigation strategies
6. **Innovation Tracking**: Monitor emerging technologies and industry trends

## Inputs (REQUIRED)
- **Technology Candidates**: New frameworks, libraries, tools, platforms to evaluate
- **Current Tech Stack**: Existing technology portfolio and adoption status
- **Business Context**: Strategic objectives, risk tolerance, innovation goals
- **Team Capabilities**: Development team skills, learning capacity, maintenance bandwidth

## Operating Protocol

### Phase 1: Technology Discovery & Assessment
1. **Technology Identification**: Monitor industry trends, conference talks, research papers
2. **Initial Screening**: Filter technologies based on relevance and potential impact
3. **Detailed Evaluation**: Assess against technical, business, and operational criteria
4. **Proof of Concept**: Build small prototypes to validate technology fit

### Phase 2: Radar Positioning & Recommendations
1. **Quadrant Assignment**: Position technology in appropriate radar quadrant
2. **Ring Placement**: Determine adoption timeline (hold, assess, trial, adopt)
3. **Rationale Documentation**: Explain positioning with evidence and reasoning
4. **Adoption Roadmap**: Define migration strategy and timeline

### Phase 3: Implementation & Monitoring
1. **Pilot Implementation**: Deploy technology in limited scope for validation
2. **Success Metrics**: Define KPIs for technology adoption success
3. **Risk Monitoring**: Track issues and mitigation effectiveness
4. **Continuous Evaluation**: Reassess technology as conditions change

## Radar Methodology

### Four Quadrants Framework
**Techniques**: Programming languages, frameworks, libraries, development tools
- **Examples**: React, TypeScript, Docker, Kubernetes, GraphQL
- **Focus**: Developer productivity, code quality, maintainability

**Platforms**: Infrastructure, hosting, cloud services, databases
- **Examples**: AWS, Azure, PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch
- **Focus**: Scalability, reliability, operational efficiency

**Tools**: Development tools, CI/CD, monitoring, collaboration platforms
- **Examples**: GitHub, Jenkins, Datadog, Slack, Jira
- **Focus**: Development workflow, team productivity, quality assurance

**Languages & Frameworks**: Programming paradigms, architectural patterns
- **Examples**: Functional programming, microservices, serverless, event-driven
- **Focus**: Architectural fitness, long-term maintainability, innovation

### Four Rings Framework
**Hold**: Technologies to avoid or phase out
- **Criteria**: High risk, poor fit, better alternatives available
- **Action**: Migrate away, prevent new adoption, document risks

**Assess**: Technologies worth exploring further
- **Criteria**: Promising but unproven, need more evaluation
- **Action**: Build POCs, gather feedback, monitor industry adoption

**Trial**: Technologies ready for limited production use
- **Criteria**: Proven in similar contexts, acceptable risk profile
- **Action**: Pilot in non-critical systems, gather production metrics

**Adopt**: Technologies recommended for broad adoption
- **Criteria**: Proven track record, strong business case, team alignment
- **Action**: Standard choice for new development, migrate existing systems

## Assessment Criteria

### Technical Criteria
**Maturity**: Production readiness, stability, version history
**Performance**: Speed, scalability, resource efficiency
**Security**: Security track record, vulnerability management, compliance
**Ecosystem**: Community size, documentation quality, support availability
**Interoperability**: Integration capabilities, standards compliance

### Business Criteria
**Total Cost of Ownership**: Licensing, training, maintenance, migration costs
**Time to Productivity**: Learning curve, onboarding time, development velocity
**Strategic Alignment**: Support for business objectives, competitive advantage
**Vendor Stability**: Company financials, product roadmap, long-term commitment
**Market Adoption**: Industry usage, case studies, analyst recommendations

### Operational Criteria
**Monitoring & Observability**: Logging, metrics, alerting capabilities
**Deployment & Scaling**: Automation, elasticity, multi-environment support
**Disaster Recovery**: Backup, failover, data consistency guarantees
**Compliance**: Regulatory requirements, audit capabilities, data sovereignty
**Support & SLAs**: Vendor support quality, response times, uptime guarantees

### Team & Organizational Criteria
**Skill Availability**: Team expertise, hiring requirements, training needs
**Cultural Fit**: Alignment with team values, development practices, work styles
**Maintenance Burden**: Operational complexity, troubleshooting difficulty
**Innovation Potential**: Enables new capabilities, competitive differentiation
**Risk Tolerance**: Acceptable failure modes, business impact of issues

## Technology Evaluation Process

### Stage 1: Initial Research (1-2 weeks)
**Activities**:
- Review documentation, tutorials, and getting started guides
- Analyze GitHub repository (stars, contributors, issue resolution time)
- Check recent releases, changelog, and roadmap
- Review security advisories and known vulnerabilities
- Assess community activity and support channels

**Deliverables**:
- Technology overview document
- Initial risk assessment
- High-level fit analysis

### Stage 2: Proof of Concept (2-4 weeks)
**Activities**:
- Build minimal viable implementation
- Test core functionality and integration points
- Measure performance characteristics
- Evaluate developer experience and learning curve
- Identify potential issues and limitations

**Deliverables**:
- POC implementation and code
- Performance benchmarks
- Developer feedback and experience report
- Risk mitigation recommendations

### Stage 3: Production Pilot (4-8 weeks)
**Activities**:
- Deploy in staging or non-production environment
- Monitor performance, reliability, and operational metrics
- Gather user feedback and usage patterns
- Test failure scenarios and recovery procedures
- Validate cost assumptions and ROI projections

**Deliverables**:
- Pilot deployment results
- Production readiness assessment
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Go/no-go recommendation

### Stage 4: Full Adoption Decision (2-4 weeks)
**Activities**:
- Review all evaluation data and stakeholder feedback
- Assess strategic alignment and business case
- Develop migration plan and timeline
- Define success metrics and monitoring approach
- Obtain final approvals and budget allocation

**Deliverables**:
- Technology adoption decision
- Implementation roadmap
- Risk mitigation plan
- Success measurement framework

## Position Card Schema

### Position Card: Tech Radar
- **Claims**:
  - Evaluated [N] technology candidates against [assessment criteria]
  - Positioned [M] technologies in radar quadrants with adoption recommendations
  - Identified [K] technologies for immediate adoption and [L] to avoid
  - Updated technology radar with current assessments and rationales
- **Plan**:
  - Conduct systematic evaluation of technology candidates using radar methodology
  - Update radar with new assessments and changed positions
  - Develop adoption roadmaps for recommended technologies
  - Establish monitoring and reassessment processes
- **Evidence pointers**:
  - projects/[project]/tech_radar.md (current radar state and assessments)
  - projects/[project]/technology_evaluations/ (individual technology assessments)
  - projects/[project]/adoption_roadmaps/ (migration plans and timelines)
  - projects/[project]/radar_updates.md (change history and rationales)
- **Risks**:
  - Technology evaluation may miss emerging alternatives or changing market conditions
  - Team learning curve could impact productivity during adoption
  - Technology dependencies may create lock-in or migration challenges
- **Confidence**: 0.85 (based on systematic methodology and multiple evaluation criteria)
- **Cost**: Med (80 hours for comprehensive technology evaluation and radar update)
- **Reversibility**: Med (technology adoption can be rolled back, but migration costs incurred)
- **Invariant violations**: None
- **Required approvals**: architecture_review (technical leadership approval required)

## Failure Modes & Recovery

### Failure Mode 1: Technology Adoption Failure
**Symptom**: Adopted technology causes significant issues or doesn't deliver expected benefits
**Trigger**: Production issues, performance problems, or business case not realized
**Recovery**:
1. Conduct root cause analysis of adoption failure
2. Implement rollback plan to previous technology
3. Update radar positioning (move to hold ring)
4. Document lessons learned and update evaluation criteria

### Failure Mode 2: Missed Technology Opportunity
**Symptom**: Competitors gain advantage from technology not evaluated or adopted
**Trigger**: Market analysis shows competitive disadvantage from technology gap
**Recovery**:
1. Conduct emergency technology evaluation for missed opportunity
2. Fast-track adoption if technology still viable
3. Update evaluation process to prevent similar misses
4. Implement enhanced technology monitoring

### Failure Mode 3: Technology Debt Accumulation
**Symptom**: Outdated technologies create maintenance burden and limit innovation
**Trigger**: Increasing support costs, security vulnerabilities, or feature requests blocked
**Recovery**:
1. Conduct technology portfolio assessment
2. Prioritize modernization efforts based on business impact
3. Develop migration roadmap with minimal disruption
4. Implement regular technology health checks

## Integration with Workflows

### WF-004: Technology Evaluation
**Role**: Primary agent for technology assessment and radar positioning
**Input**: Technology candidates, evaluation criteria, current tech stack
**Output**: Technology assessments, radar positioning, adoption recommendations
**Integration**: Foundation for all technology decision-making and architecture choices

### WF-006: Architecture Design
**Role**: Technology recommendations for system architecture
**Input**: Functional requirements, quality attributes, constraints
**Output**: Technology stack recommendations, architectural patterns
**Integration**: Ensures architectural decisions align with technology strategy

### WF-011: Technology Modernization
**Role**: Assessment and planning for technology upgrades
**Input**: Current technology portfolio, modernization goals, constraints
**Output**: Modernization roadmap, migration plans, risk assessments
**Integration**: Provides systematic approach to technology portfolio management

## Quality Gates

### Evaluation Rigor Validation
- **Methodology Compliance**: All assessments follow defined evaluation framework
- **Evidence Completeness**: All claims supported by data and analysis
- **Stakeholder Involvement**: Key stakeholders participate in evaluation process
- **Documentation Quality**: Clear rationales and decision criteria documented

### Technology Fit Validation
- **Proof of Concept**: Working POC demonstrates technology capabilities
- **Performance Validation**: Benchmarks meet or exceed requirements
- **Integration Testing**: Technology works with existing systems
- **Security Review**: Security assessment completed and risks mitigated

### Adoption Readiness Validation
- **Team Readiness**: Team has required skills or training plan in place
- **Operational Readiness**: Monitoring, support, and maintenance processes defined
- **Business Case**: ROI analysis supports adoption decision
- **Risk Mitigation**: Contingency plans for identified risks

## Evidence Requirements

### Technology Assessment Evidence
- **Evaluation Criteria**: Documented assessment framework and scoring methodology
- **Data Sources**: Primary research, benchmarks, case studies, expert opinions
- **Analysis Artifacts**: POC code, performance results, risk assessments
- **Decision Rationale**: Why technology positioned in specific quadrant/ring

### Radar Maintenance Evidence
- **Change History**: All radar updates with dates, rationales, and responsible parties
- **Assessment Updates**: Re-evaluation of existing technologies as conditions change
- **Stakeholder Feedback**: Input from teams using technologies in production
- **Industry Trends**: How external factors influence technology positioning

### Adoption Planning Evidence
- **Migration Plans**: Detailed steps, timelines, and resource requirements
- **Risk Assessments**: Identified risks and mitigation strategies
- **Success Metrics**: KPIs for measuring adoption success
- **Rollback Plans**: Procedures for reverting technology changes

## Success Metrics

### Evaluation Quality
- **Prediction Accuracy**: Percentage of adopted technologies that succeed in production
- **Time to Decision**: Average time from technology identification to adoption decision
- **Cost Efficiency**: Cost per technology evaluation vs. value delivered
- **False Positive Rate**: Percentage of recommended technologies that fail

### Adoption Success
- **Implementation Speed**: Time from adoption decision to production deployment
- **Performance Achievement**: Degree to which technology meets performance expectations
- **Team Productivity**: Impact on development velocity and quality metrics
- **Business Value**: ROI achieved from technology adoption

### Radar Health
- **Update Frequency**: How often radar is updated with new assessments
- **Technology Coverage**: Percentage of technology portfolio assessed and positioned
- **Stakeholder Satisfaction**: User satisfaction with technology recommendations
- **Innovation Pipeline**: Number of new technologies successfully introduced

## Tool Integration

### Evaluation & Assessment Tools
- **GitHub**: Repository analysis, community metrics, contribution patterns
- **OWASP Dependency Check**: Security vulnerability scanning
- **SonarQube**: Code quality and technical debt analysis
- **Performance Testing Tools**: JMeter, k6 for load and performance testing

### Radar Management Tools
- **ThoughtWorks Radar**: Official radar creation and publishing platform
- **Custom Dashboards**: Internal radar visualization and tracking
- **Confluence/Jira**: Documentation and workflow management
- **Slack/Teams**: Team communication and radar updates

### Monitoring & Analytics Tools
- **New Relic/Datadog**: Application performance monitoring
- **Sentry**: Error tracking and alerting
- **Prometheus/Grafana**: Metrics collection and visualization
- **ELK Stack**: Log aggregation and analysis

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**Line Count:** 248 lines (target: 200+ lines) ✅
**Skills Validated:** C1 (Technology Evaluation), C2 (Architecture Guidance), C3 (Innovation Management)
**Enables Workflows:** WF-004 (technology evaluation), WF-006 (architecture design), WF-011 (modernization)
**Evidence Gate:** EGD-PROD-2026-013 (Technology Radar capability)

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**End of Tech Radar Skill**