FIT2043 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Fallacy, Validity, Straw Man
13 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
L8 - Project Inception: Making Decisions
Reports
● Who reads them?
○ Other software engineers
○ Project managers
○ Executives
○ Decision makes
○ Why do they read?
■ Need to understand the technical issues if they are to make decisions
● Why write them?
○ Been asked to offer a professional opinion on something
○ Nontechnical managers still need to be able to make decisions about
technical matters
● Structure
○ Executive Summary (if report is long)
■ One page at most
■ About what you did
■Brief summary of your recommended course of action
○ Glossary of Terms
■ Might need to define technical terms
○ Terms of reference/introduction
■ What the decision you are trying to suppose?
■ Who asked for this to be written?
■ Why is this been asked to be written?
● What is Organisational Context - e.g. Organisational Structure
■ What criteria on which you will base your recommendations?
○ Body
■ Brief
■ Factual
■ To the point
■ List each option systematically and compare relevant features
■ Goes through the options and evaluates each against the criteria
established in the intro
○ Conclusion/Recommendations
■ Say what you consider important
■ You make clear which option/s will satisfy the criteria the best
○ Bibliography/references
Proposals
● An attempt to convince decision makers that the should follow a particular course of
action
Rhetoric and Logic
●Rhetoric: art of persuasive communication by the use of emotive language
●Logic: the art of persuading by providing arguments that demonstrate the truth of
what you are saying
Document Summary
Need to understand the technical issues if they are to make decisions. Been asked to offer a professional opinion on something. Nontechnical managers still need to be able to make decisions about technical matters. Brief summary of your recommended course of action. What is organisational context - e. g. organisational structure. List each option systematically and compare relevant features. Goes through the options and evaluates each against the criteria established in the intro. You make clear which option/s will satisfy the criteria the best. An attempt to convince decision makers that the should follow a particular course of action. Rhetoric : art of persuasive communication by the use of emotive language. Logic : the art of persuading by providing arguments that demonstrate the truth of what you are saying. Need to be admissible (need to have some reason to accept them to be true) Should be able to express this logically.
