# Writing the Background/Related Work

The Background and Related Work chapters both provide detailed
information obtained from other sources necessary to understand the rest
of the report. However, there are some slight differences between the
two:

-   Background: Technologies relevant to your MQP that you want to
    provide details on so a reader will understand your
    approach/methodology.

    *Important*: The reader should be told *how* the background
    technologies are relevant to your work, how you use them in your
    solution, or methodology approach. This can be brief, but needs to
    be explicitly called out.

-   Related Work: Novel approaches others have tried to address your
    problem (i.e., research) that you want to discuss to present the
    "state of the art" and/ for comparative purposes with you work.

    *Important*: The reader should be told *how* the work is related to
    your work. Is your approach similar/different to them? How? This can
    be brief, but needs to be explicitly called out.

The Background and Related Work can be two separate chapters or can be
combined into one chapter, depending upon the size, scope and content.

These chapters are typically second in a report, right after the
Introduction.

One of the key components of a good Background/Related Work chapter is
organization. The layout and structure of the chapter is a contribution
of your report. It represents a unique view of other work/technology
from your vantage point.

A good approach to tackling the related work is to:

1)  Gather resources (blogs and websites and especially peer-reviewed
    papers). Cast a wide net initially, but then narrow down as you get
    a better sense of relevancy. Read appropriate work in detail and
    summarize with notes.

2)  Organize into groups based on similarities. These groups likely
    become sub-sections in your chapter. Place them in an outline.

3)  Provide a summary of the works in the outline. Typically: what is
    the approach, what were the methods, what did they find. Make sure
    to explicitly state the relevance of the work to *your* project.
    This doesn't have to be done for each paper but can be at the end of
    a subsection.

Figures taken from your cited sources are allowed (and often make the
chapter much better), but should also be cited in the figure caption.

Since nearly all the information in Background and Related Work is
external, it needs to be cited, accompanied by an entry in the
References section of the report.