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Choosing Technology

Choosing technology is often the most significant area of investment you’ll make when developing or maintaining your service.

Your choice of technologies has a huge impact on the quality of your service and your team’s ability to operate and iterate it.

What to consider when choosing technology​

When choosing technology, the most important thing is to make choices that allow you to:

  • Change your mind at a later stage: Technology choices should be flexible to accommodate evolving requirements, user feedback, and unexpected challenges.
  • Adapt your technology as your understanding of user needs changes: Your understanding of what users want will deepen over time. Choose tech that supports iterative development and easy pivoting.
  • Make effective security risk management decisions: Ensure the technology supports best practices for securing user data and systems, and complies with relevant regulations.

You and your team should also aim to:

  • Keep up to date with the latest technology developments so you can leverage innovations that improve productivity and service quality.
  • Minimise the total cost of ownership, including licensing, maintenance, training, and infrastructure costs. Avoid vendor lock-in by choosing open standards and flexible platforms.
  • Use standard government technology components where possible to enhance interoperability and security.
  • Reuse software that other departments have built, and ensure your own software is easy to reuse and integrate. - Follow best practices around Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to facilitate this.
  • Ensure full control of any data you store to meet privacy and compliance requirements.
  • Be aware of and comply with relevant cybersecurity obligations, including data protection laws and security standards.

Pick a Language Suited to the Domain​

Choosing the right programming language is one of the most critical decisions you'll make when starting a new software project. The language you select will shape your system’s architecture, development speed, hiring needs, long-term maintenance, and even its security posture.

This guide will walk you through key factors to consider, helping you make a well-informed, strategic choice that aligns with your project’s goals.

Consider Developer Skill Sets​

  • What is your team familiar with?
  • Is it easy to hire developers with experience in this language?
  • Are there good learning resources and community support?

Choosing a niche language with few available developers may slow progress and increase onboarding costs.

Evaluate Ecosystem & Tooling​

A language is only as good as its ecosystem.

  • Are there stable frameworks or SDKs?
  • Does it have good testing, debugging, and deployment tools?
  • Are there trusted packages for your needs (e.g., authentication, APIs, DB access)?

Factor in Security and Compliance​

For projects in regulated sectors (government, healthcare, finance):

  • Choose languages with mature security libraries and compliance support.
  • Look for languages that make secure coding practices easier (e.g., strong typing, input validation, built-in auth).

Ensure Maintainability and Scalability​

  • Will this codebase grow to 10K+ lines? Choose a language with modular design, strong typing, and code clarity.
  • Are you building a long-term product? Prefer widely adopted, well-maintained languages (e.g., Java, Python, TypeScript).
  • Avoid experimental or dying languages for critical systems unless you can commit to maintaining them internally.

Other Important Factors in Technology Choice​

Infrastructure and Hosting​

  • Will your technology run on cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments?
  • Does it support your infrastructure preferences, such as containers (Docker, Kubernetes), serverless, or virtual machines?
  • Consider availability of managed services that can reduce operational overhead.

Integration and Interoperability​

  • Can the technology easily integrate with existing systems and third-party services?
  • Does it support open standards and protocols (REST, GraphQL, OAuth)?
  • Are APIs well supported and documented?

Performance and Reliability​

  • Does the technology meet your performance requirements (e.g., low latency, high throughput)?
  • Is it proven in production environments similar to your scale and use case?
  • How well does it handle failures and recovery?

Community and Vendor Support​

  • Is there an active community or commercial vendor support available?
  • How quickly are bugs and security vulnerabilities fixed?
  • What is the release cycle and roadmap for the technology?
  • Is the technology open source or proprietary?
  • What are the licensing terms?
  • Are there any restrictions or obligations that might affect your project or organization?
  • Ensure compliance with any organizational or governmental procurement policies.

Final Thought​

Choosing technology is a strategic decision that shapes your project’s success from day one and throughout its lifecycle. It requires balancing flexibility, security, cost, talent availability, and future-proofing.

By taking a holistic, informed approach — considering both technical and organizational factors — you empower your team to deliver a service that is robust, user-centered, and sustainable.