Final Year Project Report Best Practices

Chapter 2 · Practice 1 of 3

Organise the review by theme, not by paper

From Write the literature review chapter

Why it matters

Group related work under themes that match your problem. For a medicine expiry tracking project, the themes might be:

  1. Inventory systems for small retailers.
  2. Expiry and batch tracking in pharmacies.
  3. Demand forecasting for perishable stock.
  4. Usability of business apps for non-technical users.

Under each theme, discuss several works together: what approaches exist, where they agree, where they differ and what none of them handles. This reads as an argument rather than a catalogue, and it leads naturally to the gap your project fills.

Research projects may be asked for a per-item structure instead. FAST's R&D format asks, for each research item, for a summary, a critical analysis of strengths and weaknesses, and its relationship to the proposed work. Follow your format, but keep the comparison visible either way.

Do

  • Group works under three to five themes
  • End each theme with what is still missing

Avoid

  • One paragraph per paper with no links between them