Understanding the Role of Recommendation Reports

For more about proposals and progress reports, see Ch. 11 and Ch. 12.

A recommendation report can be the final link in a chain of documents that begins with a proposal and continues with one or more progress reports. This last, formal report is often called a final report, a project report, a recommendation report, a completion report, or simply a report. See the sample recommendation report continuing the series about tablet computers at Rawlings Regional Medical Center presented in Ch. 11 and Ch. 12.

A recommendation report can also be a freestanding document, one that was not preceded by a proposal or by progress reports. For instance, you might be asked for a recommendation on whether your company should offer employees comp time (compensating those who work overtime with time off) instead of overtime pay. This task would call for you to research the subject and write a single recommendation report.

Most recommendation reports discuss questions of feasibility. Feasibility is a measure of the practicality of a course of action. For instance, a company might conduct a feasibility study of whether it should acquire a competing company. In this case, the two courses of action are to acquire the competing company or not to acquire it. Or a company might do a study to determine which make and model of truck to buy for its fleet.

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A feasibility report is a report that answers three kinds of questions: