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 • Testing • 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 29, 2008 • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Arizona

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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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. Don’t exceed two levels of subsections.

9. 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.

10. Table of Contents • 1. Introduction………………………..1 • 2. Design Overview…………………..3 • 2.1 Hardware………………………3 • 2.2 Software……………………….5

11. 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.

12. Lists (cont.) • Number your figures in the order they appear in the report. • Number your tables in the order they appear in the report. • 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.

13. Lists (cont.) • The word “Table” and the Roman numeral for that table should be centered above the title of the table 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.

14. Introduction • Describes the “what” and “why” of the report. • Describes 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.) • Don’t 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 team’s 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.

24. 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 report’s readers.

25. 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.