Chapter 4 · Practice 2 of 3
Compare existing work instead of summarising it one by one
Why it matters
A weak literature review is a list of summaries: "Paper A did this. Paper B did that." A useful one compares works on the points that matter for your problem and ends by showing the gap your project fills.
The FAST handbook's research report format asks for exactly this for each item: a short summary, a critical analysis of strengths and weaknesses, and its relationship to the proposed work. A comparison table makes that easy to read:
| Work | Approach | Strength | Weakness for our users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Existing inventory app X | Cloud app, barcode scanning | Mature, cheap | No batch expiry, English only |
| Research paper [3] | Demand forecasting with LSTM | Good accuracy on large chains | Needs years of data small shops do not have |
| Our project | Batch tracking plus simple alerts | Fits small shops, Urdu UI | Prediction limited to available history |
End the section with two or three sentences that state the gap plainly.
Do
- Compare works on the criteria that matter to your users
- End with a clear statement of the gap
Avoid
- A list of paper summaries with no comparison