The Sitecore Radar is inspired by Thoughtworks popular Technology Radar. Here's a short intro to some of the key ideas. Most of the content is borrowed directly from the faq page over at Thoughworks.
The Radar is all about tracking interesting things, which are refered to as blips. Blips are organized onto the Radar using two categorizing elements: the quadrants and the rings. The quadrants represent different kinds of blips. The rings indicate what stage in an adoption lifecycle we think they should be in.
The quadrants are a categorization of the type of blips:
- Techniques: Things that can be applied while working with Sitecore, like applying structure to the software or following design guidelines (like Helix).
- Modules: Under Modules we explicitly categorize 3rd party components that can be installed/deployed to a Sitecore product and enhances its features.
- Product: All software available from Sitecore except for the content management core (Experience Management). We assume that the quadrant might be a guidence for people already working with Sitecore and as of today the "default" minimal viable Sitecore product is the Sitecore Experience Management.
- Tools & Libraries: Software that are generally not deployed to/with Sitecore to enhance business features, but software that enhances the development experience with Sitecore.
The rings set blips into a competitive relation per category and provide an opinionated advisory on how we see the blip in todays context. The rings and their definitions are an exact copy of the definitions Thoughtworks came up with.
- Adopt: The Adopt ring represents blips that we think you should seriously consider using. We don't say that you should use these for every project; any tool should only be used in an appropriate context. However we do think that a blip in the Adopt ring represents something where there's no doubt that it's proven and mature for use.
- Trial: The Trial ring is for blips that we think are ready for use, but not as completely proven as those in the Adopt ring. So for most organizations we think you should use these on a trial basis, to decide whether they should be part of your toolkit. Typically we've used trial blips in production, but we realize that readers are more cautious than us.
- Assess: In the Assess ring are things to look at closely, but not necessarily trial yet - unless you think they would be a particularly good fit for you. Typically, blips in the Assess ring are things that we think are interesting and worth keeping an eye on.
- Hold: The Hold ring is for things that, we haven't had a good experience with. Therefore we are calling them out to warn you that you may run into trouble with them as well. Sometimes this is because we don't think they're mature enough yet; sometimes it means we think they're irredeemably flawed; or just being misused. We do place things in the Hold ring that we wish the wish agencies and customers wouldn't use.
A blip is a technology or technique that plays a role in the Sitecore ecosystem. Blips are things that are ‘in motion’ - that is we find their position in the Radar is changing - usually indicating that we’re finding increasing confidence in them as they move through the rings.
This is not a bullet proof recipie and not a must to follow, it just helped me getting some consistency into the blip descriptions:
- 1 sentence to explain what the blip is about
- background info on the blip to learn more about it
- good things about the blip
- bad things about the blip
- reasoning of the classification (ring assignment)
First and foremost, you can simply open an issue and add the full blip content there, no need to mess with forks, clones and PRs. That said, if you whish to issue a pull request with your new blip (or changes to an existing blip), you're very welcome to do so. (copy any of the existing blips or the _blip.md template to start your contribution) Feel free to contact us if you intend to be a regular contributor. We'll happily add you to the project.