Preparing for Literature review

At a high level view the purpose of a literature review is to gather evidence from others to quantify your own participation or views or even to disagree with your own views and opinions.


Sources of information



Traditional sources of information for scholarly research:

• Professional Journals, 
• Research Reports, 
• Books 
• conferences 

I will also be using the following resources:

• CSU (University Library) libraries
• Google Scholar
• Internet based resources (whitepapers, articles, tech websites)

I have broken my research project into 2 areas:

1st phase: University library

2nd phase: Internet Search

The Problem Domain associated with Workforce Mobility

Problem Domain:

Enterprises that leverage the Third Platform–(the combination of cloud, mobile, social and big data) will have a distinct competitive advantage. Business has changed in modern times and corporations are looking into new ways to conduct business. The easiest way that can explain the problems that corporations are facing is that staff are expecting and demanding access to information similarly to how they access information in their private life. With the release of tablets and smart phones as well as social media consumers have been exposed to a new way of accessing information and preforming functions in a simple “cloud” like way. The challenge that IT from various corporations now face is how they provide these services to their user base in a secure and optimized fashion. Business if forcing IT to change this way so that their workforce can work from anywhere, anytime and be better than the competition they face.  

Here is a brief list of challenges that IT departments that are engaged on a workforce mobility project may encounter:

•         Users of corporate IT systems may have a range of devices that they want to use to access the corporate applications that they need to perform their jobs.
•        Corporate data/IP is now stored on multiple devices, what happens if the device is lost or stolen?
•       Applications that work on laptops/PC’s (traditional) may not run or be supported on mobile devices (new platform).
•        How does IT support and preform break fix solutions to devices that are not connected directly to the corporate network?

These are just a few of the problems that arise from a mobile workforce. The benefits that can be realized from giving users flexibility and innovation seems to be a strong driving force for the adoption however organizations need to understand the risks and costs associated with it.

WBS_March 14

Workforce Mobilty research project_Pert Chart

Where to start when choosing a research topic????

How do I find out about emerging trends or innovative topics in ICT?

Hold a brainstorming session and record your ideas on your computer, mobile device or even on pen and paper (think by writing). A blank page and a wandering mind can be just as thought provoking as an online search with keywords and phrases. You may never uncover what you think unless you write it down and then you can evaluate your thinking further.

Places to go, people to see, things to do

• Subscribing to IT magazines eg Wired, http://www.wired.com/, PC mag http://www.pcmag.com/
• Membership of professional organisations:
  • Australian Computer Society, http://www.acs.org.au/
  • IEEE, http://www.ieee.org/index.html/
  • Association for Computing Machinery, http://www.acm.org/
  • COMPTIA http://comptia.org/
• Attend Conferences and read the Proceedings. See Conference Alert pages like http://www.conferencealerts.com/
• IT companies own research:
  • Microsoft Research: http://research.microsoft.com/
  • IBM Research: http://www.research.ibm.com/
  • Intel Labs: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/research/intel-research.html
  • Google Research: http://research.google.com/
• Social networks and microblogging eg Twitter and Linkedin
• Big universities: http://web.mit.edu/research/
• Traditional media, current affairs from newspaper and television
• Communities of practice such as listservs
• Celebrity 'mavens' – follow blogs or Twitter feeds of 'charismatic experts'
• Vendor sites eg Microsoft, Oracle, IBM etc.
• RSS feeds
• Create Journal alerts- Primo topic alerts(Library)
  • http://www.csu.edu.au/division/library/research/alerting-services
• Google scholar alerts as per the page below:

Make sure it is something that interests you the must and is current with the modern times. The topic must have an abundance of resources available for you to review.  

Chosen topic: Mobile (workforce Mobility)

Chosen topic: Mobile (workforce Mobility)

1. Is it suitable?

-          It is a broad topic that touches on all three discussion points: technology, applications and issues.

-          It is a broad topic and offers many discussions and I have a particular interest in how and why mobile devices are being used in the corporate workplace.

-          Mobile devices are still considered a major emerging innovation and technology. They have completely changed the way consumers access information and are key drivers for the change in IT- nicknamed the "third platform".

-          The topic of mobile devices is interesting.

-          The selected topic is technology focused and relevant to this research subject.

2. Technologies associated with smart mobile devices

-          Smart Phones

-          Tablets

-          WIFI

-          3G/4G/LTE

-          Bluetooth

-          Bar code scanners

-          GPS

-          End point payment systems (credit card swipe machines attached to smart devices)

3. Applications associated with mobile devices

-          Navigation applications

-          Email

-          Web browser

-          Sync and Share

-          Social media

-          Mobile Gaming

-          Corporate applications

-          Banking

-          Trading

-          Weather

4. Issues associated with  mobile devices

-          Security concerns for both corporates and consumers

-          Management concerns (for corporate IT?

-          Limited processing power

-          Limited battery life

-          Limited enterprise functionality