Last year we launched our inaugural Tech Radar (Vol.1) as a way of capturing and charting the ever-changing technology, platform and design trends in a meaningful way. Your feedback was overwhelmingly positive and we’re proud to introduce Vol.2 alongside our recent virtual event featuring some of New Zealand’s most renowned business and technology leaders. 

While our team continues to dissect and interpret complex trends and what they mean via regularly updated blogs, our bi-annual Tech Radar assembles the opinions of multiple experts who explore movements in software development and design practices and what that means for your business. 

We’re particularly excited about the launch of Vol.2 as it enables us to share our insights and expertise on emerging technology, in addition to reflecting on what has changed in the market. For further info on how the Tech Radar works and how to use it for your organisation, scroll to the bottom to learn more. 

We’ve not exhausted the extensive list of changes (check out the radar for the full experience), instead we’ve highlighted some of the key things that you need to know.

Let’s get started.

Language and frameworks 

Although we’ve got a number of updates in Language and Frameworks, a couple stand out for us. 

You’ll likely be familiar with Human-Centered Design (HCD), after all it’s a concept that’s been around since the late 50s. However its use in technology has gained prominence in recent years with the advent of digital transformation disrupting the status quo as more people turn to technology for their everyday needs. The benefits of HCD are numerous – it is the accepted best practice for good product design and development as it prototypes in rapid cycles harnessing evidence from actual users. This blip has moved into Adopt on the radar with its influence on almost every project. 

We’ve also added Lean UX and moved this into Trial on the radar. Another example of the industry responding to global conditions, including the pandemic and economic pressure, Lean UX is a great way to test ideas with compressed timeframes or budgets. It also requires a higher level of team collaboration and aims to make decisions quicker by removing the need to perfect everything along the way. 

 

Tools

Always an exciting place to explore, we’ve updated the radar with blips that feature frequently in our client projects. Dependency Track, a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) analysis tool that allows organisations to identify and reduce risk in the supplier software/third party dependency chain, is new and has moved into Adopt. 

 

Platforms

Another great new feature to consider – Salesforce Functions is designed to boost developer productivity by using open-source or third party frameworks, saving development time and effort. By building and integrating Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) your team can use their preferred language and tools to develop Salesforce solutions instead of having to write or re-write code. This is in Assess and will be something we continue to consider for our clients based on their needs. 

On the Trial ring, Backstage was a topic of much discussion with Matt Law from The Warehouse Group. We discussed how The Warehouse Group saw real success, backed up by some hard metrics. Matt says it used to take 4-6 weeks to spin up a new service – Backstage supported a reduction down to 35 seconds! trong business leadership understanding is pivotal, and for executives who are not a technology native,a business case based on a reduction in engineering hours is easy to understand. Key lessons included the importance of aligning changes with a broader architectural roadmap – if the architecture is going to limit the establishment of the Golden Path for a team, then these constraints need to be addressed.

 

Techniques

Product / Design Vision & Principles is within the Adopt ring, and was discussed heavily in our launch event. 

Dan Cornwall, GM Design at ClearPoint said “When creating new Digital Products, we often start with a reason, and business case, and aspirations for a customer experience. Over time the MVP becomes phase two. Business priorities change and technical debt starts growing. It becomes easy for the business and the product team to lose sight of ‘Why’ the channel exists and become focused on the roadmap, backlog and technical capabilities, and what incremental features are people making the most noise about this month.”

Dan also mentioned that taking a step back and creating a Product Vision, and Experience principles are a hugely valuable way to regroup and define a meaningful purpose for all this effort. It creates a north star and a concept of where we’re heading that everyone can align behind and head toward. It helps provide a clear decision lens for product strategy and decision making… and it also helps explain to the wider business why the team is making the strategic ‘bets’ that it is.

Local component testing is new and is now in the Adopt quadrant. This technique allows tests to be executed into a full build of an application component in a local Kubernetes environment. The benefits are numerous – this can be stood up on a developers’ computer or in the build system and other collaborating components can be mocked and any infrastructure can live temporarily in Kubernetes to run the test. Although tested on personal computers it still provides the necessary structure and confidence about the behaviour of the application as it will eventually be built and run in an environment. 

Another mover and shaker in the Adopt quadrant is API first development, a technique that ClearPoint has used extensively to help teams achieve better code quality and speed of development. Essentially, it puts APIs at the foundation of the architecture design and software development. Teams create a single source of truth that defines how software should behave, and they do this through OpenAPI standards – useful for clients who might consume your APIs in the future.

 

Check out the highlights of our event with Clearpoint, Xero, Jarden and Waka Kotahi (NZTA) below.

To further assess and discuss the impact some of these features will have on organisations across New Zealand, ClearPoint has assembled leaders from some of the country’s biggest players to unpack what it means for them and the industry. View our virtual event and enjoy an informed conversation about why it’s more important than ever to delve into the future of tech and how it will shape what we do. 

How does the ClearPoint Tech Radar work? 

The landscape of technology is vast. To enable us to develop an honest and fresh take on what’s relevant we assembled a team across ClearPoint to capture their views, based on real-life experiences and examples from our clients. 

Through some healthy, robust, discussions we could narrow in on a set of Radar ‘blips’ and their radial positions of Adopt / Trial / Assess / Hold (more on this shortly). Quite a number ended up on the cutting room floor, often because they were deemed well established in the market already and an appropriate fit for multiple contexts. The approach we took enabled us to bring diversity of thought to topics, providing our audience with the opinion of people working at the coal face everyday.

So, what is a blip? Each blip represents a tool, technique, platform, language or framework in motion, and the position of the blip is reviewed by our team over time. The movement of the blip through the rings could be down to market conditions, confidence in the blip, adoption and application. Importantly, the Radar is not a superset of everything in the tech landscape, but focuses on the trends of what is changing in the market. And, for a blip to appear on the Radar we must have had experience on a real customer project.

The blips are categorised into 4 quadrants: 

• Tools include everything from data visualisation to UX prototyping tools.
• Techniques cover practices such as centralised logging through to ‘Just Enough Design In-time’.
• Platforms include cloud based services, along with some SaaS products we’ve had success with.
• Languages & Frameworks feature mobile languages like Flutter, and easily adoptable frameworks such as Micronaut.

The radial position of the blips are divided into four rings as mentioned above – Adopt / Trial / Assess / Hold. This simple method provides a framework for determining each blip’s maturity, and allows us to map how this changes over time.

 

Let’s explore the four rings on the radar:

Adopt

Proven and mature for use, in a given context. ClearPoint has extensive experience in their use across a range of clients.

Trial 

Ready for use although not quite as proven in the industry. We recommend that you test or trial before commitment, to inform an investment decision for example. ClearPoint have trialled, and have experience of productionising these blips.

Assess

Worth keeping an eye on, or is only for consideration if it’s a particularly good fit for your use case. 

Hold 

May have been accepted in the industry, but we believe that these shouldn’t be used for new initiatives or further invested in. Our honest approach to the Tech Radar means that ClearPoint are candid in pointing out why we’ve chosen to categorise them in this way.

 

How should the ClearPoint Tech Radar be used?

It’s a fantastic tool to keep up to date with the constantly evolving landscape that is at the core of technology – it’s as useful to us as it is to you. 

We’d suggest the Radar is used as a touch point for prioritising your own projects and investigations – cross referencing the blips and rings with the outcomes your business needs. 

If you are looking to build a new product or commence a transformation initiative, we suggest you take some time to review our Radar to ensure you are getting off on the right foot. 

As you plan and budget for the maintenance of your existing applications, our Radar will provide you with guidance on where you might have to invest in the future. Take note of the blips in the hold category. 

The way the rings are designed makes it easy to familiarise yourself with the blips and consider how relevant they are for you – all the way from Adopt to Hold. You may want to investigate a blip and understand more about it and this could even involve building your own Radar that captures the discussion around what’s next for you. 

The Tech Radar will be updated on a bi-annual basis and should be consumed alongside our regular blogs as a way to keep on top of trends, movements and advice from experts in the industry.