Technical Report Writing

Technical report writing is use of effective language

for conveying a technical, commercial or industrial
message to achieve a predetermined purpose.

The technical report should be more formal.

Technical writers usually use a more formal writing
style than do non technical writers. A degree of
formality is required because the personal style of a
technical writer must be secondary to the clear and
objective transmission of information.

Technical reports are not mystery novels, we should

get to the point as directly as possible. Reports should
clearly differentiate between facts and opinions.
Because most technical reports rely on figures and
tables for the presentation of data, the form and
quality of the figures and tables are important in
establishing the style and readability of the report.
Before beginning to write the report, carefully select
the data to include.
A good technical report will be in the following
format,

• Problem statement:

• Solution approach

• Types of testing

• Test output

Problem statement:

A problem statement is a clear concise description

of the issues that need to be addressed by a problem
solving team and it has to be presented in the
beginning of the report.
A good problem statement should answer these
questions:
• What is the problem? This should explain why
the team is needed.
 • Who has the problem or who is the
client/customer? This should explain who needs
the solution and who will decide the problem
has been solved.
• What form can the resolution be? What is the
scope and limitations (in time, money,
resources and technologies) that can be used to
solve the problem? Does the client want a white
paper? A web-tool? A new feature for a
product?
There should not be any ambiguity in stating the
problem.
 Solution approach:
Once the problem statement is done, we should
present the solution approach to the problem. This
includes,
• Presenting various approaches to the problem.

• Description of all the approaches in brief.

• Selecting a suitable and appropriate approach.

• Explanation for selecting the particular approach.

• Broad algorithm for the problem.

Let us take an example of sorting a given set of

numbers. Here we have various methods for sorting
namely,
• Selection sort
• Bubble sort
• Quick sort etc.

We can solve the problem in any of the approach

stated above but we prefer quick sort in doing it
because efficiency of quick sort is better than any
Other sorting technique.
In the same way we have to mention the solution
approach, to solve the problem, in our report.
Types of testing:

Once the solution approach has presented we

should mention the various types of testing which
our program has to undergo.
The various types of testing are,

• Unit Testing

• Integration Testing

• System Testing

• Regression Testing

• Volume Testing

All this types of testing has to be mentioned. All

the constraints on which the program is not
executable are mentioned. We should specify in
brief about all the types of testing and process
undergone in each type.
Test output:
The test output and discussion of the results
is the heart of the technical report. Many readers
are interested only in obtaining the quick review
of the work afforded by the output and the
concluding section. But readers who have
reason to study the entire text of a report
normally spend most of their time on this
section. Here we present the output for the
different inputs given.
The output has to include the following,

• Boundary conditions checking

• Screen shots of debugging

• Screen Shots of the Execution

• Screen shots of application during run time