Stages
From a layman's perspective, the technological maturity can be broken down into five distinct stages.
- Bleeding edge - any technology that shows high potential but hasn't demonstrated its value or settled down into any kind of consensus. Early adopters may win big, or may be stuck with a white elephant.
- Leading edge - a technology that has proven itself in the marketplace but is still new enough that it may be difficult to find knowledgeable personnel to implement or support it.
- State of the art - when everyone agrees that a particular technology is the right solution.
- Dated - still useful, still sometimes implemented, but a replacement leading edge technology is readily available.
- Obsolete - has been superseded by state-of-the-art technology, maintained but no longer implemented by the specific firm.
Read more about this topic: Technology Life Cycle
Famous quotes containing the word stages:
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child’s play is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)
“But parents can be understanding and accept the more difficult stages as necessary times of growth for the child. Parents can appreciate the fact that these phases are not easy for the child to live through either; rapid growth times are hard on a child. Perhaps it’s a small comfort to know that the harder-to-live-with stages do alternate with the calmer times,so parents can count on getting periodic breaks.”
—Saf Lerman (20th century)
“America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)