Final Year Project Report Best Practices

Chapter 3 · Practice 1 of 3

Explain each major decision and the alternatives you rejected

From Write the design and implementation chapters

Why it matters

Examiners want to see engineering judgement, not just the final design. For each significant decision, write a short paragraph:

  1. The need: what problem the decision solves.
  2. The options: two or three realistic alternatives.
  3. The choice: what you picked and why, given your constraints.
  4. The cost: what you gave up.

Example: "We needed offline use on low-end phones. We considered a progressive web app, React Native with SQLite, and a native Android app. We chose React Native with SQLite because two members knew React and it supports local storage with later sync. The cost is a larger app size than a PWA."

A design decisions table near the start of the chapter makes these easy to find during the viva.

Do

  • Record need, options, choice and cost for each big decision
  • Keep a decisions table examiners can scan

Avoid

  • Presenting the final design as if no alternatives existed