How to Write Your Report

Director Russo has asked you to write a report stating your recommendation on which proposal to fund. The following step-by-step guide will help you do your work.

1. Revise your Work Plan. Before your begin work on this task you should work with your team to plan and organize your efforts. Though you will not write any of your report during this step, this is an important part of organizing your effort to complete this stage of the project.
   
   
   1. Review the email from Armando Russo and make sure you understand what you are being asked to do in this task.
      
      
   2. Together with your team, review the support materials for this task, specifically this step-by-step. Is there any new information that can help you better define your work plan?
      
      
   3. Update your work plan for this task.
      
      
2. Revise your Outline.
   1. Review your outline. The information in your outline should be fairly complete since you have done your option analysis, met with your team to discuss the results, and formulated a recommendation. Your mentor has made some final suggestions on your outline. Before you begin to write your report, revise you outline based on the feedback provided and identify any final research needs.
      
      
   2. Conduct any additional research to write your final paper. Your mentor may have commented, for example, that a section in your outline did not include enough information. You may need to do more research in order to develop that section. Use this time to wrap up your research based on your mentor’s feedback.
      
      
3. Draft your Report. Following the work plan you created, draft your report based on your outline and research notes. Your paper should inform your reader about the problem, the options you considered and how you made a selection.

You may find it helpful to review the writing resources in the General Skills Resources, particularly those on collaborative writing.

Tip: Use your evidence to support your writing. You should incorporate information from your research that will help your readers understand the science behind the proposals, as well as support your analysis of each proposal. Make sure information you quote or paraphrase is properly cited. For additional information on citing sources, please refer to the links in the General Skills Resources.

Tip: You should present your ideas in your report without bias. Since you are not necessarily trying to persuade your readers to your point of view, you should present all the relevant facts, not only those which strongly support your recommendation.

4. Create an Executive Summary. An executive summary is a comprehensive synopsis of your report and is the last section to be written. It summarizes the key points into a one or two paragraph, abbreviated version of your report. Executive summaries are often read by people who don’t have time to read the entire report or who want a brief overview before they read for the details.

For information on how to create an executive summary see the links in the General Skills Resources, under Writing.

5. Conduct a Peer Review.
   1. You should exchange the section of the paper you wrote with another team member. You should review his her section of the paper and s/he should review yours. Each team member should have an opportunity to review and give feedback on a part of the paper s/he did not write.
      
      
   2. Once the reviews have been completed, team members should review each others written comments and meet to discuss the feedback as necessary.
      
      
   3. For information on how to conduct a peer review, refer to the Giving Feedback Skill Tutorial and the resources on Giving Constructive Feedback in the General Skills Resources.
      
      
6. Conduct a Quality Review. The quality manager should conduct a review of the completed draft. S/he should review the draft and make sure that the team has covered the material requested by Director Russo. The Quality Manager should also look for consistency issues across multiple sections.

Tip: Sections authored by different people often read a little differently. The style of each section, the verb tense and voice in which each section is written should be consistent. Even when written by several people a report should sound like it had a single author.

7. Based on the Quality Manager’s feedback, make changes to your draft.
   
   
8. Submit your revised draft to your mentor for feedback.

9. Finalize your report based on your mentor’s suggestions.
   1. Review the suggestions your mentor made during his/her review. If time allows, you may want to schedule a meeting with your mentor to discuss his/her thoughts on your report.
      
      
   2. Finalize your draft by incorporating your mentor’s suggestions and doing one final edit of the entire report. Make sure it is a cohesive document that reads as a single author, but represents everyone’s work.
      
      
10. Submit your work. Review the checklist found in the Submit Your Work section of this task and submit your report to your mentor.