Ch 10 - Brief Reports Flashcards
Name four types of brief reports?
Progress reports
White papers and briefings
Incident reports
Laboratory reports
(Postmortems were also covered)
What three things does a progress report typically contain?
Summary of completed activities
Discussion of ongoing activities
Forecast of future activities
What are the seven basic features of brief reports?
Introduction - report’s purpose and main point
Summary - of activities of that reporting period
Results - of reporting period activities
Graphics and charts
Description - of future activities
Record of expenses - for that reporting period
Conclusion - restate main point, make any recommendations needed, and look to future (1 to 4 sentences)
What information does a white paper/briefing contain?
Summary of the facts
Discussion of the importance of the facts
Forecast about the future importance of the facts
What information does an Incident Report contain?
Summary of what happened (facts)
Discussion of why it happened
Description of how the situation was handled
Discussion of how the situation will be avoided in the future
What information do laboratory reports contain?
A summary of the experiment (facts)
Presentation of the results
Discussion of the results
What are the steps to writing a brief report?
1) Make a plan and do research
2) Organize and draft brief report
3) Choose style, design, and format
What’s a useful tool for researching a brief report?
activity journal or work log
Internal reports are meant to describe activities, when a log is kept of activities and accomplishments, they are easy to report.
What strategies are used for planning and researching a brief report
Analyze the situation (five-w and How) Subject - identifies recent activities Purpose - why you are reporting Readers - who's reading and why Context of use
What’s contained in a brief report introduction?
define subject
state purpose
state main point
add background information, stressing the importance of a subject, and forecasting the body of the report if readers are not familiar with project
What style elements should be used in a brief report?
Plain style techniques
Begin each paragraph with topic sentence
Use objective tone and avoid humor or irony
State negative information candidly & avoid apologies
What design elements should be used in a brief report?
Follow organizational template if available
Use headings to locate key information
Use graphics for important concepts, objects, processes
Use tables and graphs for data and trends
Center graphics in the text and place after the point where refer to them
Name five strategies for writing brief reports for multiple media.
Include embedded links Embed videos Use presentation software for summaries Use shared archive Convert documents to PDFs
What are six purposes of a postmortem?
Describe project Describe major stages of project Identified what worked Identify what didn't work Identify what would do differently Highlight best practices (2-5 that were developed during project and will be passed along to future teams)
