Techniques to Make the Right Technology Decisions
There are situations where we need to make decisions among competing products or technologies. For instance, between the use of GraphQL and REST or open source and commercial products. There are a few techniques (or tools as some call them) available to help in choosing the right product or technology. The ones that I have used are:
Decision Tree
As the name implies, this is a tree-like structure that consists of questions or checks based on the strengths of each tool or technology that is being decided. A series of checks or questions lead us to the final decision. The decision tree is suitable for simple scenarios for a handful of checks but as the checks increase, the tree could become unwieldy.
Flowchart
Possibly, the most common technique used to make decisions. As most of us learnt programming through flowcharts, we find it easy to implement any logic or decision-making through them. It can also go more detailed than a decision tree.
Pugh Matrix
Sometimes, it may not be a yes-no criteria as there could be a combination of the options. In such cases, a Pugh Matrix is useful. It is more granular than the above options and uses weights to score the fulfilment criteria. After scoring them, it sums up the values and ranks them thereby helping make a decision.
So, those are the decision making techniques that I have commonly used. If you have used other techniques, please do let me know.
Please note that the comparison between GraphQL is representative and rudimentary, it is not complete and it only used to illustrate the different techniques.
Cross posted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/daneshzaki/
