19. Recommendations And Future Work

Where will the work you have undertaken will take you next?

A report is a story, set in time. The literature review summarises the past work, and brings the report in to the present. Your work constitutes the story, with the discussion being the happy ending of that story... but life does not end there, and chances are there is a lot more work to be done, either by you or others. And while your results may have answered some questions, they probably also raised others. In addition, your critical discussion most likely highlighted areas where the accuracy should be improved in the future. 

The role of the recommendations and future work section is dual. On the one hand, based on your own experience of the work you have undertaken, you should be able to formulate a series of recommendations for later similar work, whether it is undertaken by your or somebody else; it is feedback and suggestions on how to improve. On the other hand, you should suggest the future work or next steps to be undertaken; perhaps a validation of your experiment is need, or additional tests are required, or newly raised questions must be answers. In any case, you should offer your personal guidance on where the work should go next.

And while you may not realise it yet, this section will become crucial in the future. Indeed, in your time-line, the recommendations represents the future. But for the person carrying your work, it will represent the most up-to-date knowledge and how to explore it further, thus making this a vital part of your work, as it will influence a number of your readers.