Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) Best Practices

Overview

The Enterprise Technology Radar is a visualization and communication tool that presents the organization’s current position on a set of technologies in a format designed to promote understanding and discussion at all levels of the organization. The Technology Radar concept was originated and is most widely associated with Thoughtworks, the global technology consultancy, which publishes its own Technology Radar semi-annually as a guide to the technology landscape from their perspective. The Thoughtworks Technology Radar organizes technologies into four quadrants — Techniques, Tools, Platforms, and Languages and Frameworks — and four rings — Adopt, Trial, Assess, and Hold — that indicate their recommendation for using each technology. (Source: Thoughtworks, Inc., Technology Radar, thoughtworks.com/radar.)

An enterprise-specific Technology Radar adopts the same format and visualization approach but reflects the organization’s own strategic context, existing portfolio, regulatory environment, and architectural direction rather than a generic industry view. The Thoughtworks public radar is a useful external intelligence input to the organization’s own radar construction — it surfaces technologies worth evaluating, signals emerging industry consensus about technology adoption directions, and provides a common vocabulary for technology discussions. But it is not a substitute for the organization’s own radar, which must reflect what is appropriate for that specific organization rather than what is appropriate for the broader technology industry.

Best Practice

Understand the Enterprise Technology Radar as serving two distinct governance functions that complement but do not replace each other or the Technology Standards Register. Its communication function: the Radar presents the organization’s technology positions in a visually accessible format that promotes broad understanding and discussion across engineering, architecture, and business communities. Teams that would not read a document see and discuss the Radar. Technologies they are considering are visible in context alongside related technologies, surfacing alternatives they might not have considered. Its governance function: the Radar update cycle provides a structured, recurring governance touchpoint for reviewing and updating technology positions that might otherwise drift without a forcing function. The act of constructing each radar update requires the governance function to review all current positions, assess any technologies that have not been reviewed since the last update, and make explicit decisions about any positions that should change.

Benefit(s)

The Enterprise Technology Radar complements the Technology Standards Register by making the organization’s technology positions visible and accessible to communities that are unlikely to consult a formal governance document but are highly likely to engage with a visual tool that organizes technologies in a format that promotes discussion and discovery. The Radar extends the governance reach of the TPM program from the architects and technology leaders who are its primary audience to the broader engineering community whose technology decisions the program is designed to govern.