Technology Research

Research Process

1. DEFINE    — What specific decision are we making?
2. CONSTRAIN — What are the non-negotiables? (team skills, budget, timeline)
3. GATHER    — Collect data from quality sources
4. COMPARE   — Evaluate options against the same criteria
5. DECIDE    — Choose with explicit reasoning
6. DOCUMENT  — Record the decision for future reference

Technology Evaluation Criteria

| Criterion | What to Look For | |---|---| | Problem Fit | Does it actually solve YOUR problem? | | Maturity | Production-proven? Version 1.x or 0.x? | | Community | Active GitHub, Stack Overflow, Discord | | Maintenance | Last commit? Open issues? Response time? | | Performance | Benchmarks relevant to your scale | | Learning Curve | Team familiarity, documentation quality | | Ecosystem | Plugins, integrations, tooling | | Exit Cost | How hard to migrate away? | | License | MIT/Apache (permissive) vs GPL vs commercial |

Source Quality Hierarchy

1. Official documentation — authoritative, check version
2. Production case studies — most reliable, hardest to find
3. Benchmark comparisons — verify the benchmark matches your use case
4. Respected technical blogs — check date and author credentials
5. Reddit / Hacker News — good for real-world sentiment and gotchas
6. YouTube tutorials — useful for learning, not for decisions

Always check the date. A 2-year-old comparison may be obsolete.

Decision Document Template

markdown
## Technology Decision: [topic]

**Date:** | **Decided by:**

### Context
[What problem are we solving? What are our constraints?]

### Options Evaluated
| Criterion | Option A | Option B | Option C |
|-----------|---------|---------|---------|
| Problem Fit | | | |
| Maturity | | | |
| Team Familiarity | | | |
| Performance | | | |
| Long-term Risk | | | |

### Decision
**Chosen:** [option]

**Reasoning:** [why this fits our specific context]

**Trade-offs accepted:** [what we give up]

**Revisit if:** [conditions that would change this decision]

Build vs Buy Framework

Build when:

• This IS your core competitive differentiator
• No existing solution fits well enough (>40% custom needed)
• You have the expertise and time to maintain it

Buy / Use OSS when:

• It's infrastructure (auth, payments, email, queues)
• Time-to-market is critical
• Your users don't care who built the underlying tool
• Maintenance would distract from core product

The hidden cost of building: every line you write, you now own forever.

Staying Current

Trusted sources for staying up to date:

• GitHub Trending (weekly)
• State of JS / State of CSS surveys (annual)
• Stack Overflow Developer Survey (annual)
• Official release blogs of tools you use
• Hacker News "Who's Hiring" (for industry signals)
• Thoughtworks Technology Radar (strategic view)