Technical Report Outline

1
Technical Report Outline

• Title Page
• Frontispiece
• Abstract
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures/ List of Tables

2
Technical Report Outline (cont.)

• Introduction
• Requirements Specification
• Design Concepts and Analysis
• Design
• System Build
• Design Results
• Conclusions and Recommendations
• Acknowledgement
• References
• Appendix

3
Title Page

• The title should clearly state the subject of the
  report.
• The title should be prominently displayed in bold
  font and should be centered.
• The title page should be as brief as possible.
• No page number on the title page.

4
Title Page (cont.)

• The following information should be centered on
  the page
• Submitted by Team followed by the names of the
  authors
• Submitted to Mentor, Advisor and course
  instructors
• Submitted on April 26, 2007
• Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  University of Arizona

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Frontispiece

• Usually a photograph of the team or the teams
  prize lunar lander.
• This is a single-sided document which follows the
  title page.
• This is page ii of the report.

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Abstracts

• Abstracts of technical reports are brief one
  paragraph summaries of
• What the report describes
• Why the design was undertaken
• How it was done
• And the results.
• This is page iii of the report.

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Table of Contents

• Tells the reader what information is contained in
  the report.
• Tells the reader where specific information is
  located within the report.
• Abstracts come before the Table of Contents and
  are not listed in the Table of Contents.
• Use leader dots to connect the section titles to
  the page s.

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Table of Contents (cont.)

• Each section of the report should have a clear
  and informative title and a section .
• You can break down large sections of the report
  with subsections. Subsections also have titles
  and subsection s. Dont exceed two levels of
  subsections.

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Table of Contents (cont.)

• All sections and subsections of the report are
  numbered and the numbers are listed before the
  titles in the Table of Contents and before the
  section or subsection titles in the text of the
  report.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction..1
• 2. Design Overview..3
• 2.1 Hardware3
• 2.2 Software.5

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List of Figures/ List of Tables

• Tells the reader where specific information is
  graphically illustrated in the report.
• Each figure and table needs to be numbered and
  needs a clear and informative title.
• If you have figures and tables in your report you
  will need to have a list of figures as well as a
  list of tables.

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Lists (cont.)

• Number your figures in the order they appear in
  the report. Use Arabic numbers.
• Number your tables in the order they appear in
  the report. Use Roman numerals.
• Figure s and titles should appear directly
  underneath the figure in the text of the report
  and should be justified with the left margin of
  the figure.
• Example Fig.1. Schematic Diagram of the .
• All figures must be introduced and referenced in
  the text of the report. Figure is spelled out
  when referencing a figure at the beginning of a
  sentence, but is abbreviated to Fig. when the
  reference is made within a sentence.

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Lists (cont.)

• The word Table and the Roman numeral for that
  table should be centered above the title of the
  table,which is also centered, directly above the
  table in the text of the report.
  
• Place figures and tables as close as possible to
  your prose introduction of each graphic.

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Introduction

• Describes the what and why of the report.
• Describes the customer, the problem, the general
  background of the situation, the objectives for
  solving the problem, and may include a discussion
  of other work that has been done to solve the
  problem.
• It also describes the scope of the report. Tells
  the reader how broad or narrow your treatment
  will be. Future tense you are previewing the
  report.

15
Introduction (cont.)

• Dont break the introduction into short
  subsections. Instead, use full sentences and
  well-developed paragraphs with transitions
  between the various ideas in your sentences and
  paragraphs.

16
Requirements Specification

• This section describes the technical requirements
  for the design and how each requirement was
  weighted. Past tense.
• Following the prose description of the
  requirements, you will also want to include your
  teams requirements specification table. This may
  be significantly revised, as the requirements for
  the design may have changed as the design was
  implemented.

17
Design Concepts and Analysis

• Discusses in some detail the two design concepts
  you considered, but did not implement.
• Describes in greater detail the concept you
  selected for the final design, the concept
  analysis that was undertaken, and the findings of
  this analysis.
• The decision matrix should be included, and
  should be specifically referred to in the text of
  this section of the report.

18
Design

• Discusses in detail how the system was designed.
• You need to explain in detail the functional
  decomposition of the system.
• Need to also describe all of the units and
  subsystems, and how each part of the system was
  designed.
• This needs to be very detailed and complete.
  Another engineer should be able to follow the
  design process and replicate the design to verify
  your results.
• You also need to describe any analysis or
  modeling, which was undertaken to justify or
  validate the design.

19
System Build

• Discusses in detail how the system was built.
• Includes units and subsystem construction,
  debugging, and testing.
• Includes a detailed discussion of how the units
  and subsystems were integrated and tested.
• Includes acceptance testing.

20
Results

• Presents your testing results to verify
  requirements.
• Data and research results past tense.
• Functionality of the system present tense.

21
Conclusions and Recommendations

• Conclusions summarize the report and draw
  inferences from the results. All of your
  conclusions must be supported by data.
• Conclusions should never introduce new material.
• You may also have a separate section entitled
  recommendations in which you suggest directions
  for future work. No data required.
• Watch tense!!!!!!!!!! The design problem, design
  requirements, design and build, and testing will
  all be in the past tense. Results may be past
  tense for data obtained or present tense for the
  functionality of the system.

22
Acknowledgment

• Thanks the sponsor, faculty, and other
  individuals who supported the design.

23
References

• This page includes references to all the sources
  used in the preparation of the report.
• Include sources from which you have obtained
  equations, figures, quotes, data, or ideas that
  you have summarized or paraphrased.
• See the IEEE web page for reference format.

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Appendix

• The appendix includes detailed information that,
  if included in the discussion, would interrupt
  the flow of the reading of the report.
• The appendix often includes information which
  will only be of interest to some of the reports
  readers.

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Appendix

• Arrange the content of the appendix in the order
  in which the appendices are referred to in the
  text of the report.
• Assign an identifying letter to each appendix
  beginning with Appendix A.
• Ensure that every appendix is referred to in the
  text of the report.