Technology Radar
Adopt, trial, assess and hold — with movement, dates and owners.
5 to work through
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intermediate
An organisation maintains a technology radar that nobody consults before choosing tools. What makes a radar useful rather than decorative?
2 min answer -
intermediate
An organisation publishes a technology radar and teams ignore it. What makes a radar influence decisions?
2 min answer -
intermediate
How can a technology radar function as lightweight governance, and what makes it degrade into a list nobody consults?
3 min answer -
intermediate
Thoughtworks has published its Technology Radar since 2010 and now twice a year - volume 33 appeared in November 2025 - sorting technologies into adopt, trial, assess and hold from blips submitted by client project teams and curated by an internal group. An enterprise copies the artefact: the same four rings, a page per technology, published quarterly by a central architecture team of five. Two years on, teams do not consult it before choosing tools. What did the copy leave out, and where would copying the original be a mistake?
3 min answer -
intermediate
What is a technology radar for, and what makes one useless?
2 min answer
2 terms in this topic
Radar Ring Semantics
The meaning attached to each ring of a technology radar, which determines whether it guides decisions or merely lists opinions.
toolTechnology Radar
A published, periodically revised classification of technologies into adopt, trial, assess and hold, giving guidance without issuing a mandate.
Neighbouring topics
Enterprise Architecture
General material on architecture at portfolio and estate scale.
EA Domains
Business, application, data and technology architecture as viewpoints.
Application Architecture
The application estate as a designed portfolio rather than an accumulation.
Technology Architecture
Platforms, runtimes and infrastructure standards across the estate.
Capability Maps in EA
The stable frame for hanging investment, ownership and health off.
Application Portfolio Management
Inventory, ownership, cost and health for every application.
Application Rationalisation
Retire, consolidate, replatform — and why retirement is under-applied.
Technology Standards
Guidance that teams follow because it helps, not because it is mandated.
Reference Architectures
Pre-approved templates for recurring solution shapes.
Architecture Governance
Preventive, automated controls rather than review meetings.
Architecture Review Boards
Thresholds, early engagement and a real route to accept deviation.
Enterprise Integration
Estate-wide integration strategy, standards and shared infrastructure.
TOGAF
The ADM as a checklist, tailored rather than followed literally.
EA Frameworks
Zachman, FEAF and others — vocabulary rather than method.
Architecture Roadmaps
Sequencing change across an estate with dependencies and funding.
Paved Roads
Making the supported path the easiest path, with a way to leave it.
Platform Teams
Reducing other teams' cognitive load, measured by adoption.
InnerSource
Open-source collaboration practices applied inside an organisation.
EA Metrics
Measuring whether architecture work changed anything.