technical-research

Technical Research Workflow

Goal

Produce a structured technical evaluation that gives the team enough information to make a confident build / buy / adopt / reject decision.

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Step 1: Define the Research Question

Ask:

1. What technology, library, or approach are we evaluating?
2. What problem is it solving?
3. What are the alternatives we should compare against?
4. Who will use the decision — architect, developer, or product?

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Step 2: Evaluation Dimensions

Assess the technology across:

Maturity & Ecosystem

• Version, release cadence, age of project
• GitHub stars, downloads/week, last commit
• Community size (Stack Overflow, Discord, forums)
• Commercial backing vs. community-only

Fit Assessment

• Does it solve the stated problem? Fully / partially / needs workaround?
• Known integrations with our current stack
• License compatibility

Performance & Scale

• Benchmark data (if available) or credible community reports
• Known limits: throughput, latency, memory footprint
• Scale stories: who uses it at production scale?

Security

• CVE history — any critical vulnerabilities in last 2 years?
• Active security patch cadence
• Compliance considerations (GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, etc.)

Developer Experience

• Time to first working example
• Quality of documentation
• Local dev setup complexity

Cost

• Licence cost (open source, commercial, seat-based, usage-based)
• Hosting / infrastructure cost implications

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Step 3: Comparison Table

Dimension	Option A	Option B	Option C
Maturity
Fit
Performance
Security
Developer XP
Cost
Overall

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Step 4: Recommendation

State clearly:

• Recommended option and why
• Conditions / caveats that could change the recommendation
• Risks to monitor if adopted
• Suggested next step (spike, POC, ADR, direct adoption)

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Step 5: Output

Save to {docsPath}/analysis/technical-research-{slug}.md.