Any tips for successfully adding new tech to your software development process? Do you typically start with a small pilot before rolling it out department-wide?

- Start small: Pilot the technology to understand its deployment, limitations, scalability, advantages, and troubleshooting needs.
- Assess necessity: Understand the real needs and benefits. While staying up-to-date is valuable, ensure the tech solves problems or improves processes.
- Evaluate thoroughly: Research features, compatibility with existing stack, and long-term viability.
- Plan carefully: Document implementation, anticipate challenges, and set success criteria.
- Monitor results: Track metrics and gather feedback during the pilot.
- Scale gradually: If successful, incrementally roll out to larger teams.

Assuming the tech is affordable and supported by the companies security/tech policy. I always try it out for a sprint or two and then retro the outcome. 

Contribution from my colleague Nancy Chen, who is an expert in Software Engineering. 

Adding new technology to your development process should be treated as a project, to ensure smooth adoption and success:

1. Define Clear Objectives: Set specific, measurable goals for adopting the new technology. For example, aim to improve efficiency by a certain percentage or reduce the number of bugs by a specific amount.

2. Evaluate Technology and Alternatives: Assess the technical capabilities, costs, and available support of different solutions. It's important to involve representatives from all relevant departments and project teams, as each team may have unique needs.

3. Prioritize Stable Releases: Choose a stable release version of the technology to minimize issues project team will encounter when they implement it and instil confidence in the project teams. This reduces the likelihood of encountering significant bugs or instability during implementation.

4. Consider Licensing Costs: to save cost, ask for free licenses to test the technology and in non-production environments. Additionally, if individual licenses are too expensive, consider concurrent user licensing models to make the technology more affordable across teams.

5. Finalize Selection: After thorough evaluation, select the best-suited technology for your environment and obtain the necessary approvals.

6. Conduct a Pilot (Proof of Concept - POC): Start with a small-scale POC to test the technology. Document best practices, issues and resolutions and measure how well the objectives are met.

7. Provide Training: Organize internal or external training sessions as needed to ensure the teams can use the new technology effectively.

8. Appoint an Internal Point of Contact: Designate someone to act as the main point of contact for any questions or issues during the transition.

9. Roll Out Gradually: Start implementation with a few open-minded project teams. Document the steps carefully, especially those related to data migration, and gather feedback.
10. Scale Implementation: Once the initial phase is successful, expand the rollout across more teams or departments.

11. Monitor and Measure Progress: Continuously track the outcomes against the initial objectives to ensure the technology is delivering the expected benefits.

Yes we do. We apply feature gates on user personas and rollout to a few early adopters before we open the pandora box