Workshop: Making a Technical Argument –Teaching Technical Analysis and Communication Together

This workshop describes a technical argument template that can be used in many different situations where engineers need to write a straightforward technical report. It is ideal for situations when a new solution is being recommended, the value of a piece of work (or new product) has to be explained, or when several solutions need to be compared. However, it can also be adapted for many other circumstances, such as reviews articles, proposal, and pitches. The structure embeds critical thinking about the technology or solution being discussed and, more importantly, what it is intended to achieve. Crucially, it focusses on the early argument steps (the ones that engineers often neglect in their rush to get to the technical detail), rather than the straightforward description of the solution itself (which technical people generally discuss straightforwardly without assistance).