12 Aug One of our goals this semester is to investigate Gartner’s IT Trends in Our Industry.

Instructions

One of our goals this semester is to investigate Gartner’s IT Trends in Our Industry. Unless you are in CIS, please don’t pick a hardcore Tech Industry. If you do still need to choose an industry, see the Weekly Assignment in the “Past Assignments” folder and pick an industry you want to work in one day, or one you have an interest in, or one a relative works in who could use your research!

One of the best skills you can hone while in college is the ability to search for information more efficiently and more effectively.

The attached sheet has detailed help on how to find information using ONET, IBIS World and Gartner.

Requirements

IT Trends in My Industry: Industry Overview and Strategic IT Trends (Length Requirement: 2.5-3 pages: please don’t go over or under this range).

In this project, you must examine how IT is used in an industry that you are interested in. You must define the industry, describe key issues and current IT trends for this industry. A secondary goal is for you to learn about and use sources like ONET, IBIS World and Gartner. You already gained some experience using IBIS World earlier this semester for a weekly activity.

• Introduction: Discuss what your paper is about. This should include a thesis statement that distills your paper’s topic down to one sentence.
• A small section on your Career and Industry:For your career–What kind of career are you interested in? (feel free to discuss your entry-level career and your career 10 years down the road!). Use ONET or a similar site (and be sure to cite it in the body your paper and reference it at the end). As far as your industry, the IBIS pdf source is great to use here. Include the following information:
• Industry NAICS code (title and code) : and source citation
  • Industry Size (typically measured in billions of dollars) and source citation
• Industry Competitors (two to three sample firms) and source citation
• A larger section on the one (or two–no more) strategic IT Trend(s) that impact(s) your industry the most: For this section, use GARTNER research available from WCU’s Library–which of Gartner’s top 10 strategic IT trends impacts your industry the most? For your industry, look up each strategic IT trend and note which ones produce the most/best results. Another strategy to try is to use other sources (Google) to identify trends in your industry and then use Gartner to learn more about one or two of the trends. Be specific in this section. Use Gartner as a source (and be sure to cite it in the body of your paper and reference it at the end) and include source citations. Include specific examples of that trend affecting specific firms in your industry.
• Conclusion: Wrap up your report in a paragraph that summarizes what you presented in the previous sections.

Format:

Microsoft Word document, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, Times New Roman 12 font. Provide the title of your report at the top and start right in with your introduction.

In-Paper Citations, References and Quotation Marks

You should have at least five citations WITHIN the paper AND five corresponding references at the end. One citation and reference need to come from Gartner.

For citations within your paper (also called in-text citations), use APA style such as (Fulk & Nagy, 2020) or (www.biztalk.com) just after the information you got from that source AND also include references at the end of your report (please use APA style). Plagiarism includes leaving out in-paper citations, quotation marks or references at the end. End-of-Paper references do not count toward paper length.