I'm cataloging my journey towards earning my bachelor's degree from Western Governor's University. Emerging Technologies was the first class I took after my orientation. This was a relatively easy class - it covered examining emerging technolgoies (who'da thunk? 😊), the pros and cons of technology adoption, and outlined a process on evaluating and implementing new pieces of technology in the workplace. Here's a brief synopsis of the sections of the paper:

1. Organizational Need: Why does the company need to utilize the product you are suggesting? How would they benefit from it's adoption?
2. Technology Solution: What piece of technology are you proposing for the executives' approval? Why should they consider your suggestion?
3. The Adoption Process: How would the company rollout the changes necessary for the adoption? Justify your reasoning with the Gartner STREET approach. (Scope, Track, Rank, Evaluate, Evangelize, and Transfer)
   • Scope: Determine the requirements and risks for the technology. Is this the solution the company is looking for?
   • Track: Build the list of possible solutions to the problem. Build some criteria for picking a product.
   • Rank: Rank the products based on what was decided in the Track step. Build a list of Pros & Cons.
   • Evaluate: After building a list of potential products, try them out to see if they meet the company's needs.
   • Evangelize: Hype up the product, and get the rest of the team onboard. This step is crucial!
   • Transfer: Your job is done - transfer the project to the team responsible for keeping the product running day-to-day.
4. Tecnology Impact: What are some side effects the company would face if we went ahead with the adoption? Positives and Negatives, e.g. layoffs, time savings, etc.
5. Technology Comparison: Why did you choose the product that you did? What other competitors are there in the space?
6. Adoption Success: What is the criteria for success? Define a goal for the company to hit and justify it.

Essentially, it's a class about writing a proposal for the management team of your company to approve. It can be completeled pretty quickly if you put your nose to the grindstone. The rubric they give you is spot on as far as what the evaluation team wants. If I had dedicated 3-4 hours a day like WGU suggests, this is easily a 2-3 day class.

The instructors really hold your hand through this course, too. After receiving the welcome email with the very detailed rubric / cheat sheet for writing the paper, I started working. Each section of the rubric was a header on the paper, followed by a paragraph or two depending on the topic. After I finished the paper, I asked around on discussion boards to make sure I formatted my paper correctly. I then submitted the paper to my instructor over email for a cursory glance and they responded with the exact changes I needed to make. e.g. "replace this entire sentence with this entire sentence word for word."

After two emails back and forth with the instructor I submitted the paper and passed without any complaints.

My Evaluation Report
You appropriately summarized organizational needs, such as the need to comply with FISMA using NIST as a security framework. You also outlined an adoption process for the technology, including details of the STREET methodology. In addition, you presented a competent discussion about the technology comparison, such as the analysis between the proposed emerging technology solution of Datadog's Log Management and Analytics and an alternative technology solution of Splunk, and included two advantages and two disadvantages that each technology may have for the organization.

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