Writing Project Reports
Purpose of a report: writing to be read
 Central goal: Report is written to be read by someone
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else.
Have in mind, your intended audience.
First possibility: report read by yourself, advisor and
evaluation committee. Has little value.
Next Broader possibility: report readable by your
peers and your juniors down the line. Has greater
value
Best possibility: Report is a publishable quantity.
Useful for technical community in general.
The Structure of Your Report
 Cover page and title page
 Bonafide Certificate
 Abstract
 Acknowledgements
 Table of contents
 List of Tables
 List of Figures
 Reference work or Literature
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 List of Symbols,
Abbreviations and
Nomenclature
 Introduction
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review
General Objective
Specific Objective
Background
Body of report
Illustrations using graphs,
tables, charts, diagrams and
flow charts.
Conclusions and Future
scope
References
Cover page and title page
 This should include the project title and the
name of the author of the report.
 You can also list the name of your supervisor if
you wish.
 The title should reflect what you have done and
should bring out any eye-catching factor of your
work, for good impact.
Cover page and title page
Bonafide Certificate
Abstract
 The abstract should be short, generally about 2
paragraphs.
 The abstract should contain the essence of the
report.
 It can contain the following: main motivation,
main design point, essential difference from
previous work, methodology, and some eyecatching results if any.
Acknowledgements
 Here you thank those individuals who have
provided particularly useful assistance, technical
or otherwise, during your project.
 Your supervisor will obviously be pleased to be
acknowledged as he or she will have invested
quite a lot of time overseeing your progress.
Table of Contents
 This should list the main chapters and (sub)sections of
your report.
 Choose self-explanatory chapter and section titles and
use double spacing for clarity.
 Include page numbers indicating where each
chapter/section begins.
 Try to avoid too many levels of subheading - three is
sufficient.
Introduction
 This is one of the most important components of the report.
 It should begin with a clear statement of what the project is,
so that the nature & scope of the project can be understood
by a lay reader.
 It should summarise everything you set out to achieve,
provide a clear summary of the project's background,
relevance and main contributions.
 The introduction should set the context for the project and
should provide the reader with a summary of the key things
to look out for in the remainder of the report.
Reference work or Literature
Review
 It is common to have this as a separate section,
explaining why what you have done is something
novel.
 Here, you must try to think of dimensions of
comparison of your work with other work.
 For instance, you may compare in terms of
functionality, in terms of performance, and/or in terms
of approach.
General and Specific Objective
 Research objectives is a concrete statement describing
what the research is trying to achieve.
 A well-worded objective will be SMART, i.e Specific,
Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, & Time-bound.
General objective:
 General objectives are broad goals to be achieved.
 The general objectives of the study state what the
researcher expects to achieve by the study in general terms.
 General objectives are usually less in number.
General and Specific Objective
Specific objective
 Specific objectives are short term & narrow in focus.
 General objectives can broken into small logically
connected parts to form specific objectives.
 General objective is met through accomplishing all the
specific objective.
 The specific objectives are more in number & they
systematically address various aspects of problem as
defined under ‘the statement of problem’ & key factor that
is assumed to influence or causes the problem.
 They should specify what the researcher will do in the
study, where, & for what purpose.
Background
 The background section of the report should set
the project into context and give the proposed
layout for achieving the project goals.
 The background section can be included as part of
the introduction but is usually better as a separate
chapter.
Body of the report
 Consists of three or four chapters detailing the technical
work undertaken during the project.
 They can reflect the chronological development of the
project, e.g. design, implementation,
experimentation, optimization, evaluation etc. If you have
built a new piece of software, you should describe and
justify the design of your program at some high level.
 It should also document any interesting problems with, or
features of, your implementation.
 You need to discuss the content of these sections
thoroughly with your supervisor.
Various Illustrations
 The cliche "a picture is worth a thousand words" is
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appropriate here.
Spend time thinking about pictures. Wherever necessary,
explain all aspects of a figure (ideally, this should be easy).
Do not leave the reader wondering as to what the
connection between the figure and the text is.
While describing a table, you have to describe every
row/column.
And similarly while describing a graph, you have to
describe the x/y axes.
Conclusions and Future Scope
 The project's conclusions should list the things which have
been learnt as a result of the work you have done.
 It is common to finish the report by listing ways in which
the project can be taken further.
 This might, for example, be a plan for doing the project
better if you had a chance to do it again, turning the project
deliverables into a more polished end product.
References
 This consists of a list of all the books, articles, manuals
etc. used in the project and referred to in the report.
 In the case of a text book you should quote the name of
the publisher as well as the author(s).
 A weakness of many reports is inadequate citation of a
source of information.
 Each entry in the bibliography should list the author(s)
and title of the piece of work and should give full details
of where it can be found.
Appendix
 The appendices contain information which is peripheral to
the main body of the report.
 Information typically included are things like parts of the
code, tables, test cases or any other material which would
break up the theme of the text if it appeared in situ.