Generally, every effort is made to reduce risks in software development projects to ensure achieving functionality, time and cost goals.  One common risk-mitigation practice is to employ established, stable technologies when new, less well-understood or in-transition business processes are involved.  

However, projects supporting longer-term, strategic business initiatives may produce suboptimal results if organizations do not push the envelope in order to maintain currency with evolving technology standards and preserve options to keep the application consistent with market competition and changing business models over its usable life. 

In this post, I begin to explore how we can identify cases in which accepting risks associated with employing newer technologies, architectures or methodologies can add value to a project. Continue reading →