Assignment+4

Assignment 4 - Technology Report
Due Sunday, December 11, 2011 before the start of clas s **Deadline change -- now due before the start of class on Tuesday, December 13.**

Assignment summary
For this assignment, you will take on the role of a Research Associate at Tech Clarity Research and Consulting. Tech Clarity researchers produce emerging information technology reports of general interest to their customers – primarily senior managers and executives at large companies. In these reports, Tech Clarity identifies and evaluates emerging trends and advances in IT. After reading these reports, a manager should have a basic understanding of the technology, its potential for solving (and causing) problems, and whether it is something that he or she should evaluate further.

Your group of researchers has been tasked with identifying and reporting on an emerging information technology that is likely to be of interest to Tech Clarity's customers. You are free to select the technology you want to report on from the following list, or to propose an alternative emerging information technology in which you are interested.
 * Wikis
 * Social Networking Systems (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.)
 * Digital Rights Management
 * Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Communities such as World of Warcraft, Second Life, etc.
 * GPS systems in the enterprise (non-consumer use)
 * RFID
 * Mobile payment systems
 * Digital cash
 * Biometrics
 * Predictive analytics
 * 3-D immersive information visualization systems (caves)
 * Twitter
 * Business analytics for marketing
 * Innovative uses of digital tablets (pick a specific innovative use and look at it in detail)
 * Location-aware mobile services

Each group must select a unique emerging information technology on which to report. Tech Clarity management prefers not to pay its associates to produce redundant reports for their clients. To select a topic for your report, you need to sign up here. If you would like to report on an emerging information technology that is not on this list, please contact me with your proposed technology (bmonroe@cmu.edu) before proceeding with the report.

Deliverables
You need to produce a report on your selected emerging information technology and present it in an online format. I would suggest that you create a wiki to present your findings but you may use any other online technology that you choose to present your report. The only thing that you should submit for grading is a URL (and, optionally a userid and password if you want to keep the material password protected) that I can use to access and review your online report.

Because of the nonlinear nature of an online report, it is hard to mandate an appropriate length for the report. I suspect that it will take the equivalent of 3-6 single-spaced typed pages to provide a report at an appropriate level of detail for this assignment. Feel free to take advantage of the freedom that the wiki or web page format provides to break the structure of the report up as you deem appropriate to present your findings in as clear, concise, and compelling a manner as possible. A longer report (or a larger wiki) is not necessarily better than a shorter, more focused report. Typos, spelling errors, and poor grammar will not be looked upon favorably.

Reports may be done in teams of 1, 2, or 3 people. You may work with the same or different team members from earlier assignments but once you start working with a group on this assignment, I expect you to complete the assignment with that group.

All reports must be submitted by sending an e-mail to bmonroe@cmu.edu with the URL I should use to access and review your online report. You may send a userid and password that I can use to login if you do not wish to share your report with the world.

Report Structure:
Your report should utilize the analysis framework presented in the course. You need to be sure that your report addresses all of the framework’s primary questions and any of its relevant secondary questions. Your report should follow the standard Tech Clarity Technology Research Report structure:
 * **Executive summary**: an overview of no more than one printed page that summarizes its most critical information and recommendations in the report.
 * **Technology description**: a detailed description of what the technology does, how it works, and any important but non-obvious things that it does not do.
 * **Costs and benefits**: What problems does the technology solve (and for whom)? What new problems is the technology likely to introduce (and for whom)?
 * **Complementary technologies**: What other technologies and infrastructure does this new technology require to be successful and useful? Are those complements widely available and affordable? If the technology requires network effects to be effective, does such a network exist? Is it growing at a sufficiently rapid pace?
 * **Technology adoption recommendations**: This section segments and identifies different groups of potential adopters of the technology. It provides recommendations for each of these groups regarding adoption of the technology. Specifically, it recommends that they either take an aggressive approach to adopting the technology (and if so, for what purposes), a fast-follower or slow-follower approach (again, for what purposes), a “wait and see” approach, or ignore the technology completely.
 * **Citations and sources for further information**: Identify at least five important sources that were researched in the creation of this report, and at least five places that readers can look to learn more. These resources can be books, magazine, journal, or newspaper articles, or online resources. If you identify specific technologies or successful applications of the technology you should provide explicit references to those as well.

Evaluation:
Your report evaluation will be based on the following criteria:


 * Quality of the presentation of your ideas – clarity, succinctness, spelling, grammar, appropriate use of tables and diagrams, etc. Your report should provide a professionally prepared presentation that you would be comfortable submitting to an executive team that has paid a substantial sum of money for your work. (20%)
 * Report contains all required sections and addresses questions posed (15%)
 * Insightful evaluation of the most important aspects or issues of the technology and the context in which it is currently deployed, and likely to be deployed in the future (20%)
 * Demonstrated understanding of the emerging IT analysis framework (15%)
 * Quality of recommendations regarding adoption of the technology (15%)
 * Appropriate segmentation of potential customers and adopters
 * Appropriate recommendations for each segment
 * Appropriate source citations and guidance for further exploration. (15%)

I will use this grading sheet for this assignment:

Collaboration:
This assignment should be done as a collaborative, team effort. You are encouraged to solicit input and discuss ideas for your reports with other people, both on your team and outside of your team. The reports that your group hands in, however, must be the direct work of your team, produced by (and only by) the members of your team. The reports should reflect the conclusions that your group came to after completing your analysis. Although you are encouraged to discuss your analyses, research, and conclusions with other people, you are not permitted to outsource the writing of the reports to anybody who is not on your team.

Per the course’s Academic Integrity policy, you may not incorporate other people’s work or intellectual property into your report without appropriate attribution (citation) and the addition of a substantial contribution of your own. Remember, if you can find it on the web, I can probably find it also. The use of feedback from peer reviews, comments, and updates that have been added to your wiki page for the report are a significant special case. You may incorporate this content into your report. If the content was added in such a way that the author indicates that they want to maintain ownership of the content (e.g. by adding a comment with their name) then you should cite their contribution. Anonymous contributions, formatting changes, typo-corrections, etc. are helpful in general maintenance of the wiki but they do not need to be attributed.

As always, if you find yourself in a situation where you would like some clarification on whether a particular course of action will violate the Academic Integrity policy please contact me and explain the situation. I will provide guidance on whether I consider your proposed course of action problematic.