Writing a Project Report
By Gail Marie, eHow Contributor
Project reports communicate a project’s background, its objectives, the methods used to achieve the objectives and the results of these efforts. The writer may also discuss important aspects of the project and draw certain conclusions. Like most reports, the information should be formatted with headings, clearly communicated and well supported. There are countless ways to write a
project report. The steps below represent one method.
Information needed in advance includes:
- Project details
- Background information
- Supporting information
- Sources of information
Steps include:
- Create a title or cover page, followed by a table of contents and an abstract (see Step 9).
The project report’s title should convey the area and scope of the project.
- Consider your reader, his or her knowledge of your project and its subject. If your project was, for example, scientific but your reader is not a scientist, consider using less technical language than if he were.
- Describe the project’s scope, its objective and the main result(s) in the Introduction. You may include what you personally contributed to the project as well.
- Tell the reader about the research behind the project in a Background section, if too extensive to include in the Introduction.
- Describe the methods you used during the project to accomplish the stated objectives in a Methods/Procedures section. Don’t forget to use the past tense, as these actions have already been taken.
- Present the results of the project, which may not be the intended results. Use a Results section heading. Depending on your reader and what your project entailed, you may want to discuss the results by explaining what they show, analyzing uncertainties, noting trends, comparing the results with known theories or with the expected results, evaluating limitations of the project, detailing the possibilities of faulty interpretation or simply
discussing assumptions about the results.
- Conclude by summarizing, once again, the project report’s content and by suggesting the implications of the project’s results. Because your reader is familiar with your work, you may use project-specific terms and reference names of people and places under the
Conclusion heading.
- Propose, under a Recommendations heading, suggestions based on the conclusions outlined earlier. Describe actions you think should be taken because of the project’s results or additional work that you think is needed to gain more knowledge about the subject.
- Write the report abstract, which summarizes, like the conclusion, the report’s contents.
The abstract is actually the first section of the report, so keep it more general than the conclusion. Because the abstract is such a comprehensive summary, it is most easily written last.
- Include references and appendices such as charts, graphs, photos or additional
information at the end of the report.