The following section presents excerpts from an Executive Summary of a Final Technical Report on a new conference registration system created by a software development team in Qatar. The developers believe that the innovative features of their new system make it superior to its competitors. However, their clients (the Qatar National Convention Center) did not find the Executive Summary and Report convincing enough. In the challenges that follow, try to consider the options presented so that the developers can make the most effective case for their audience.

Directions: Identify and improve text that can make the report more effective, in terms of its parallelism, coherence, and concision.

Challenge 3: Being Coherent

Your Goal

connecting old information with new information in a seamless manner

Coherence Example

Less Coherent

“Coherence connects old information with new information. Concision cuts out unnecessary information.”

More Coherent

“Coherence connects old information with new information. Unlike Coherence,concision cuts out unnecessary information.”

Comments on Response Options

Problem Text

Our client requested that our system include more functions that would upgrade it. We managed to add these use cases, despite previous concerns about meeting our deadline and handling code defects.

Option A

“use cases, which gave us a plan for adding these new functions”

This option most obviously connects “functions” with “use cases” because it adds the purpose of the use cases which is a plan for the new functions.

Option B

“use cases for these new functions”

This option also connects “functions” with “use cases,” but, unlike the first option, it is not obvious how the two are connected. But this option may be fine for a technical audience, who may have already connected the two, so the more direct connection shown in the first option may not be necessary.

Option C

“the necessary use cases”

This option does not connect “functions” with “use cases,” but like the second option, it would be OK for a technical audience even more familiar with this topic than the previous option, who may have already connected the two without the further connections shown in the previous options.