General format information

• The main text of the report should be no more that 15,000 words in length (exclusive of appendices).
• The report must be on A4 size paper, and must be word processed (most common choices are Word or LaTeX).
• Lines should be at least 1.5 spaced to make it easier for the markers to read..
• The principal font used should be 12pt, either Times-Roman (serif) or Helvetica (sans-serif), or a font which looks very similar to either of these.

Required components of the report

Each final report must contain the following components.

• The title page of the report must have a title, author, supervisor, and year of study.

• The report must have an abstract of not more than 200 words.

• The report must have a keyword list of about 6 to 8 words. This is to help us with filing reports in the project library.

• There must be a contents page listing by chapter and section the logical structure of the report.

• There should be adequate introductory, background, and motivational material early on.
• The main body of the report will vary according to the nature of your project. This is where you present what you did and how you did it. It may include how you have managed the project, the methodology, design/development, results, testing, evaluation and so on as appropriate.
• The report must have a section towards the end containing conclusions and future work. This may include the following as appropriate: a brief summary of the main results/achievements (but you should not repeat at length findings already reported); a discussion/critique of achievements referring back to the project's goals; a consideration of difficulties, limitations and lessons learnt. There should be a section on further work indicating the next steps that would provide a useful extension to your work or further questions to answer which have been reveled by your project.

• Where applicable, the report must contain a discussion of any legal, social, ethical and professional issues relating to the work undertaken. For example, if you have gathered feedback from other students to evaluate your system, or if you have conducted a survey or an interview with colleagues at work, then you must show that you have followed the correct procedures to obtain ethical consent.

• Citations to relevant related work should be made where appropriate in the body of the text, and a reference section should give full references in a consistent style for all works cited. You may also wish to include background texts which you have not specifically cited either within the reference section or in a separate bibliography. The Library has some good resources on referencing - see https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/students/referencing/referencing-styles/

• Where appropriate, the report should contain an acknowledgements section. Here you must make a full declaration of all contributions made by others to the project as, unless otherwise stated, the project is assumed to be entirely your own work. Failure to acknowledge the work of others could easily result in university disciplinary procedures being used against you. Also, this section can be used by you to acknowledge any moral or other support which they wish to be formally recognised.

Appendices

Your report may contain small appendices containing information which is referenced in the text and is useful to the readers' understanding but which is too long to include within the actual text. Examples of this might be the questions of a survey administered as part of the work; some passages of code or diagrams of the architecture which are discussed in the text but a bit too bulky to include "in line". You should not however include substantial amounts of code in an appendix.

Self-assessment

It can be a useful exercise for you (and a point of consolidation for the reader) to put together a brief summary of what you have achieved and how it has met the competencies as set out in the standard. This is not a compulsory section, but a self-assessment is welcome. A suggested format for this is to include a short section entitled 'Author's Assessment of the Project' consisting of a brief summary of how your project relates to each of the skills and technical knowledge for your specialism.

Further information

Talk to your supervisor about your plans and show them a draft (in good time).