What is the Tech Radar?

The ServiceRocket Tech Radar is a list of technologies, complemented by an assessment result, called ring assignment. We use four rings with the following semantics:

• ADOPT — Technologies we have high confidence in to serve our purpose, also in large scale. Technologies with a usage culture in our ServiceRocket production environment, low risk and recommended to be widely used.
• TRIAL — Technologies that we have seen work with success in project work to solve a real problem; first serious usage experience that confirm benefits and can uncover limitations. TRIAL technologies are slightly more risky; some engineers in our organization walked this path and will share knowledge and experiences.
• HOLD — Technologies not recommended to be used for new projects. Technologies that we think are not (yet) worth to (further) invest in. HOLD technologies should not be used for new projects, but usually can be continued for existing projects.
• REDUCE — Technologies that actively want to be phased out and should not be used for new projects without solid reasoning. Technologies that we think are either out of date (legacy) or are not suited to the needs and capabilities of the team. REDUCE technologies should not be used for new projects, and should be phased out for existing projects.

What is the purpose?

The Tech Radar is a tool to inspire and support Engineering teams at ServiceRocket to pick the best technologies for new projects; it provides a platform to share knowledge and experience in technologies, to reflect on technology decisions and continuously evolve our technology landscape. Based on the pioneering work of ThoughtWorks, our Tech Radar sets out the changes in technologies that are interesting in software development — changes that we think our engineering teams should pay attention to and use in their projects.

How do we maintain it?

The Tech Radar is maintained by our Senior Engineers mostly from the Architecture Chapter — who faciliate and drive the technology selection discussions at ServiceRocket across the Engineering Community. Assignment of technologies to rings is the outcome of ring change proposals, which are discussed and voted on. The Tech Radar is open for contribution for all Engineering teams at ServiceRocket and depends on their active participation to share lessons learned, pitfalls, and contribute to good practices on using the technologies.

This radar is a fork of Zalando's Tech Radar — they have open sourced the code to generate this visualization.