Product Management Gets Frustrating When Someone Else Cares More About the Risks
The Fall of Product Roadmaps
In the global technology landscape, competitive differentiation and improved productivity depend on the technologies we leverage and the strengths we demonstrate with associated skill sets. At Caizin, we are an ever-expanding group of technology Yodas, passionate about researching, learning, and visualizing. As an extension of our commitment to continuous improvement, we are publishing the Caizin Technology Radar. Read to know more.
What is a Technology Radar, and Why Does It Matter?
The only constant in the technological landscape is “change”!
We must ensure that we stay relevant in the ever-evolving technological adoption curve. Keeping our cross-functional teams agile, our software development projects competitive, and our tech stack at its updated best is a continuous process.
We may define the Technology Radar as a framework to validate and adopt the current and futuristic technologies, methodologies, platforms, and tools. It facilitates the visual way of notifying what we are doing as a technology company and informs the futuristic direction.
Thoughtworks[1] deserves all the credit for pioneering the Tech Radar. Ever since its publishing, many organizations have adapted and modified the Tech Radar to meet the unique requirements of their software engineering teams.
Strikingly like the Marine Radar that tracks incoming vessels for safe navigation and collision avoidance, the Tech Radar is a visual metaphor.
In the original Technology Radar, you get to see concentric circles divided into four quadrants, each representing different evaluation statuses. Essentially, it is a graphical representation of the technologies adopted and the techniques, tools, patterns, frameworks, and programming languages applied during the product-development journey, which will appear as “blips” on the radar.
The ThoughtWorks Technology Advisory Board (TAB) explained in an article how a technology radar is a living document to assess the risks and rewards of existing and nascent technologies. It acts as an excellent guide for making technology choices and informed decisions regarding technology directions and strategies. While working with a customer focus, you can objectively assess the technologies used for problem-solving.[2]
We, therefore, intend to build a customized Caizin Tech Radar, as it is advisable to stay proactively invested in getting your tech stack right to build the product right.
How We Are Doing It
With its vast expertise in product development, Caizin has already incorporated various technologies and acquired extensive knowledge in multiple areas. For the initial version of the Caizin Tech Radar, it is imperative to highlight our proficiency in the following:
- Creating exceptional APIs and developing associated patterns.
- Heavy investment in programming languages and frameworks such as Angular, Node.js, React, and C#
- Proficiency in AWS, Azure, GCP Cloud Development
- Dedication to experience-led design for all products, making UX a top priority.
- Adherence to Agile product management principles, which are essential for successful product development.
In addition to the above, Caizin is also focused on future-proofing its technology stack by exploring Flutter, Python, and Java. Our teams are currently working on small projects in each of these areas to evaluate the feasibility of each technology and to gain expertise in them.
Why Is It Important for Caizin to Have Our Own Tech Radar?
The answer could be wrapped up with just a couple of words—future-proofing technology!
To give you a high-level enumeration of the benefits of publishing the Caizin Tech Radar, here are a few points:
- The Tech Radar is a single source of truth that helps visualize, inform, and keep the team updated on the current technology stack.
- Identifying and evaluating the performance of the existing or newly adopted technologies—the benefits, impact, and improvements required to update and revise solutions constantly.
- It helps educate the team on why particular technologies were adopted and how they can be best utilized.
- It is a great tool that can not only give an organization the tech projection it needs but can also help employees align their careers, allowing them to participate in various tech evaluations and guiding them in building key skills.
- It inculcates a culture of research-driven decision-making while building a more effective technology portfolio in the future, and it may improve our team efficiencies dramatically.
- It will also help establish client trust and confidence even before they have started working with Caizin.
- Our cross-functional teams will align with the project vision and learn to differentiate between a passing trend and the technology that will deliver on the promise. On the other hand, it will help us become even more confident about making delivery commitments with the newer tech we have adopted.
One may imagine the Caizin Tech Radar as a line segment that runs through multiple points,
connecting them to form a complete circle,
…and that’s what makes it a great tool!
Paving the way forward for employee skill enhancement; with Caizin Tech Radar, this journey of self-improvement will remain aligned with our tech projection and adoption.
I can vouch that the Tech Radar will enhance the team’s experience and help scale performance.
This is the newest segment of our Caizin Cogitations, where you can expect progressive updates on how using a Technology Radar has helped our software development succeed with agile and SaaS.
Please subscribe and stay tuned as we will be publishing the first edition of the Caizin Tech Radar real soon!
Bibliography:
[1]Thoughtworks Technology Advisory Board. (n.d.). Technology Radar | An opinionated guide to technology frontiers. Thoughtworks. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-in/radar
[2] Ford, N. (2015, November 13). Build Your Own Technology Radar. Medium; Thoughtworks. https://medium.com/featured-insights/build-your-own-technology-radar-27ef3c2e0bc2
