NSIDC Tech Radar

The Tech Radar helps NSIDC understand the ever changing spectrum of technology that is relevant to our work. It is intended to facilitate internal conversations as we build, deploy, and maintain technology and tools. It reflects the idiosyncratic opinions of its contributors. It is not meant to prescribe or limit.

Usage

We are using the Discussion feature of GitHub to maintain the content of the Radar.

As a contributor

We are limiting contributions to members of NSIDC. We are doing this via a hack. Using the Moderation settings, we are limiting interaction to repository collaborators and organization members for 6 months at a time.

• Add new content
  • Check to see if item is on the Radar, if not create a new Discussion and add at least one label.
• Add your perspective to an existing item
  • Use the Discussion tools to offer and discuss opinions.
• Highlighting a summary of several opinions
  • Add a comment that summarizes the conversation to that point and mark it as the Answer.

As a viewer

• Following a item
  • Use the Subscribe feature on a Discussion to be notified when there is conversation about an item.

Creating and Organizing Content

Initially we are dividing content into four categories:

• Languages and Frameworks
  • Programming Languages and Frameworks
• Platforms
  • Things that we build on top of such as mobile technologies like Android, virtual platforms like the JVM, or generic kinds of platforms like hybrid clouds.
• Techniques
  • These include elements of a process, such as experience design; and ways of structuring software, such as microservices.
• Tools
  • These can be components, such as databases, software development tools, such as versions control systems; or more generic categories of tools, such as the notion of polyglot persistence.

Each item should also receive at least one of the following labels. It is likely that an item will have multiple labels, that is okay! This landscape is complex with many different opinions and use cases.

• Interested
  • We are keeping an eye on the technology.
• Using - Recommended
  • Using in a current project or production code base. Would recommend it, either generally or for a specific use case.
• Using - Not recommended
  • Using in a current project or production code base. Would not recommend it, either generally or for a specific use case.
• Deprecated
  • Using in a production code base. Want to avoid new work using the technology if possible.
• Not Using
  • We made an active decision not to use at the moment

Improving the Tech Radar

We use the Issues feature to manage the Tech Radar meta.

License

See LICENSE.

Code of Conduct

See Code of Conduct.

Acknowledgements

• Our Tech Radar is inspired by and derived from the Thoughtworks Tech Radar.