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Latest Technology Trends on the Radar

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ThoughtWorks recently released a new installment of  their technology radar highlighting techniques enabling infrastructure as code, perimeterless enterprises, applying proven practices to areas without, and lightweight analytics.

The radar puts an emphasis on "infrastructure as code" through recommending the adoption of automated deployment pipelines, immutable servers, and windows infrastructure automation. Additionally it recommends trials for blue-green deployments, puppet-librarian and chef-librarian.

...both Chef and Puppet support for Windows has improved drastically. That support, combined with the inherent power of Powershell makes Windows infrastructure automation extremely viable.

ThoughtWorks recommends trials for TestFlight and HockeyApp, which are enabling continuous delivery for mobile devices. However the radar also indicates a need for adopting testing mobile on mobile networks and performance testing needs to be a first-class citizen. ThoughtWorks sums it up as follows:

While the techniques for implementing CD to mobile devices are improving, we note that testing practices are lagging behind...

The technology workforce is creating perimeterless enterprises by connecting consumer devices to enterprise networks, having development teams use cloud services as critical components of software delivery pipelines,  and using always on video conferencing to enable highly connected distributed teams.

We would caution those looking for a silver bullet to eliminate the need for physical co-location. There is no substitute for the understanding and empathy created by face-to-face communication.

The radar shows the time is right for the trial of Logstash in combination with Graylog2 to provide a powerful combination for log management.  Teams are encouraged to asses capturing client-side Javascript errors and to put them in web analytics. Snowplow Analytics provides an additional layer of information gleaned from logged web analytics. 

ThoughtWorks would like to see more collaboration around anlytics and data science:

...we are pushing for collaborative analytics and data science, where all developers use basic statistical analysis and tools to make better decisions, and work closely with experts when things get complicated.

ThoughtWorks continues to see the avoidance of monolithic enterprise solutions and their hindrance to progressing software excellence. Specifically noted as items to put on hold are TFS, Big enterprise solutions, Heavyweight test tools, and exhaustive browser based testing.

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