Overview
There's always a large number of solutions vying for our attention in any IT segment.
If you look at Wikipedia entries for, for example languages or CMSs / WCMs you will see lists containing scores of contenders.
I dislike long winded selection processes (I see them as the equivalnt of a big waterfall development) so I typically like to narrow down the field quickly.
My primary tool for this is to only consider the most popular tools and within those rising rather than waning stars.
You can then go onto consider how the tools on that shortlist fit with the department.
Why use Popularity as a Filter?
Picking a popular tool has a number of advantages:
- You are not alone - if there is a bug or something is not clear someone has probably blogged about it or there's an answer on a forum.
- It's wonderful how, with the more popular technologies, a quick internet search will reveal the answer to your current conundrum.
- User power - because you are not alone there will typically be a lot of pressure on the supplier to get bugs fixed and also to make sure new releases are properly tested.
- New features - this is not a given but it's likely a popular product will be well funded and so happy to spend some of that money on developing new features - so you won't be left behind the current hot trends for long.
- Ease of recruitment - if you've ever tried to recruit for a niche skill you will understand this point - either you can't find anyone or they want a small fortune.
- Of course if the tool you are considering is some legacy giant (or the mashed product of a series of takeovers) this probably won't be true.
- Happiness of staff - staff like using popular products - because of No.1 but more importantly because they feel more secure if there skills are in demand.
- Longevity - you can be fairly sure (even if only because of installed base) that your chosen tool and the resources with expertise in it will be around for some time - just what you want.
Assessing Popularity
I just search for the skill / tool on the job sites (Indeed seems to be popular in the UK and US and I also look at JobServe in the UK). This doesn't exactly tell me the tools popularity but it does I think get pretty close.
If you have some foresight you can search for tools that are either part of your current toolset or tools you might be interested in going forward each month.
This allows you to spot trends and hence ascertain if a tool is increasing or decreasing in popularity and might influence whether you adopt (or sunset) it.
Obviously there are other ways to assess popularity, GIT hub provides some stats on projects, Gartner probably has stats etc. so use any of these if you are uncomfortable using the method above or if you want to double check your findings or if the tool you are searching for doesn't have a distinct name e.g. 'C'.