saolalab Tech Radar
The Tech Radar organizes technologies into four rings based on adoption status:
Four Rings
Adopt
Technologies we use in production and recommend for new projects.
Criteria:
- Proven in production at scale
- Well-documented and maintained
- Team has expertise
- Low risk, high value
Trial
Technologies we're experimenting with in non-critical projects.
Criteria:
- Promising but not yet proven
- Limited production experience
- Evaluating fit for our use case
- Small risk, potential high value
Assess
Technologies worth exploring to understand potential value.
Criteria:
- Emerging or interesting
- Not yet evaluated
- May solve future problems
- Unknown risk/value
Hold
Technologies we've decided not to adopt or are phasing out.
Criteria:
- Doesn't fit our needs
- Better alternatives exist
- Deprecated or unmaintained
- High risk or low value
Evaluation Criteria
When assessing a new technology, evaluate:
- Maturity — How long has it been around? Production-ready?
- Community — Active maintainers? Good documentation? Stack Overflow presence?
- Performance — Meets our performance requirements?
- Ecosystem — Integrations, libraries, tooling available?
- Learning Curve — How long to become productive?
- Vendor Lock-in — Open source or proprietary? Portable?
- Cost — Licensing, infrastructure, operational costs?
- Security — Security track record? Regular updates?
- Team Fit — Does the team have skills? Can we hire for it?
Tech Radar Template
# Tech Radar — {Quarter} {Year}
## Adopt
- {Technology} — {Brief reason}
## Trial
- {Technology} — {Brief reason, project using it}
## Assess
- {Technology} — {Brief reason, what we're exploring}
## Hold
- {Technology} — {Brief reason, migration plan if applicable}
Migration Planning Template
When moving from Hold to Adopt (or adopting a replacement):
# Migration Plan: {From Technology} → {To Technology}
## Current State
- **Usage**: {Where is it used?}
- **Dependencies**: {What depends on it?}
- **Risk**: {What breaks if we don't migrate?}
## Target State
- **Timeline**: {Target completion date}
- **Approach**: {Big bang | Gradual | Strangler pattern}
- **Success Criteria**: {How do we know it's done?}
## Migration Steps
1. {Step 1}
2. {Step 2}
3. {Step 3}
## Rollback Plan
{What if migration fails?}
## Timeline
- {Phase 1}: {Date range}
- {Phase 2}: {Date range}
- {Phase 3}: {Date range}