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 1: Being Concise

Your Goal

cutting out unnecessary (already-known, implied or repeated) information.

Concision Example

More Concise

The goal in having students complete this activity is to show them how concision has the potential to make communication more effective.

Less Concise

The purpose of this activity is to show how concision can make communication more effective.

Comments on Response Options

Problem Text

Our client requested that our system include more functions that would upgrade it. We managed to add use cases, which gave us a plan for adding these new functions, despite our previous concerns about meeting our deadline and handling code defects.

Option A

“use cases for adding these new functions,”

This option cuts: “gave us a plan.” Although this option is most concise, the information removed may not be implied or appealing to technical audiences and may prefer a more direct connection (more coherence) between “use cases,” “plan,” and “functions.”

Option B

“use cases as a plan for adding these new functions,”

This option cuts “gave us,” and is not as concise as the option above because it keeps the word “plan.” But, keeping “plan,” creates a direct connection (or more coherence) between “use cases,” “plan,” and “functions.” Non-technical audiences who are not familiar with this topic may appreciate this connection to understand the text more clearly.

Option C

“use cases, which we used as a plan for adding these new functions,”

This option adds “which we used,” which includes more implied information than the first two options. But it actually connects what the team is doing (“we”) to the “use cases,” “plan,” and “functions.” Despite the coherence here, the second option is just as coherent, but also more concise, which may make it more appealing even for the Non-technical audiences.