Social Software at Workplace
This case study walks you through using Gartner to find relevant information for your research topic.
The research topic you are given is not your research question. You need to come out with a specific research question e.g. a specific statement or a hypothesis.
Social Software at Workplace is not your research question!
Explore your research topic and discover different aspects of the research topic before forming your research question, e.g. What is available on the market for use, How are they implemented, What is the implementation strategy/guidelines/best practice, and Who provides the service.
What information do you need?
Your research question decides the types of information you are looking for.
What is available on the market for use? How are social software implemented? - To answer this question you may need Market Analysis, Key Issues, and Case Studies.
What is the implementation strategy, guidelines, and best practice? - To answer this one you need Best Practice, Success Stories, Case Studies and Critical Capabilities.
Who provides the technology services? - MarketScope/Magic Quadrant reports and Vendor Ratings can help you on this question.
What is the potential of social software at workplace? - You can consider Forecast information.
How to start?
Start using Gartner? Not yet! You need to spend some time in forming search strings to make sure you capture all the relevant information.
E.g. "social software", "social software" and workplace, "social software" and work, and "social software" and work*.
Start Search
Go to PYXIS homepage and click Database tab. Type in Gartner and click Enter.
You can start search easily by using the search box on the top of Gartner homepage. Apply the search strings from step 2.
Filter Search Results by Content Type
Here are filtered results relevant to this research questions:
Hype Cycle reports: Hype Cycle for Social Software 2010, Hype Cycle for the High-Performance Workplace 2010, Hype Cycle for Business Use of Social Technologies 2010
Magic Quadrant/MarketScope reports: Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace, Magic Quadrant for Externally Facing Social Software
Best Practice: Dealing With 'Stay-Behinds:' How to Encourage Social Software Usage in Conservative Organizations, Avoid Five Critical Failures in Social Media Projects, How to Win Arguments About the Security of Social Software, Why Your Enterprise Needs a Corporate Blogging Policy?
Key Issues: Key Issues for Social Software and Collaboration 2010, Key Issues for the High-Performance Workplace 2009
Case Studies: The Business Impact of Social Computing: Real-World Examples of Collaboration in Employee Networks, Case Study: Swiss Re Optimizes the Value of Social Business Collaboration Software, Case Study: Evolving Employee Social Networks to Support Strategic Communities at Deloitte
Forecasts: Future Worker 2015: Extreme Individualization
Market Analysis: Report Highlight for Market Trends: Convergence Restructuring the Enterprise Social Software Market, Worldwide 2010
Filter Search Results by Other Options
You can also filter the results by Industry, Topic Area, and Region etc. For exmaple you are able to look for information on software used in Education, Government, or even Energy industries. You can narrow down the research on a particular region or country by using the region filter.
Before analyzing the research materials you find from Gartner and writing up your paper you can also explore other resources the library has. For example you can use Catalogue to look for some books, use Articles to look for some scholar articles from academic journals, and use some other databases.
Finally happy writing!