Structure your report to structure your ideas.
Having properly introduced your report and presented the work previously undertaken by others in the field in your literature review, it is now time to present your contribution and the work you did. This can take many name or forms, depending on your field of study; laboratory experiments might refer to a protocol, while other research field will simply name it the method section.
But no matter what name or form it takes, the function is always the same: structure logically your reflection and the work that you have performed, to guide the reader through your thought process and clearly detail the research or experiment undertaken. By laying out this structure, you will also realise potential flaws or weaknesses in your research, or highlight an area that should have been covered in more depth.
This is the reason why I always advise my research colleagues, students and employees to start by writing the structure of their report and the work they intend to do first. This is the best way to ensure ideas a flowing smoothly, and that there is no gap or omitted parts of the problem. And this can be critical: for a research paper, the peer-reviewers may reject your paper if your ideas are note strongly underpinned; for a college or university assignment, this will result in a lot of marks lost; finally, from a business point of view, your reputation could be at stake if an important area of the work has been overlooked.
It is therefore best practice to start structuring your report and arranging your ideas in logical sequence to discover any future problem areas and remedy to it effortlessly, has you have not conducted the bulk of the work yet. This is the prefect opportunity to start working on the sections and headings for your table of contents, and is one of the key to a successful report.
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