EXAMPLES OF INTRODUCTORY STRUCTURES

You do your most important thinking while working out the introduction. Once you get used to the process, you will find that many of the introductions fall into the same basic pattern, in that they tend generally to answer one of three standard questions, and occasionally a fourth.

1. What should we do?

2. Should we do what we plan to do?

3. How do/did we do something?

4. Why did it happen?

Exhibit B-1 shows the most common structures that fall under each question. But you might also like to see how these structures look when expanded into actual text. To this end, I supply the full introductions of the examples from, Defining the Problem.

Following these texts is an explanation of the details of two introductory structures that might cause confusion when you try to apply them (writing the body of proposals and dealing with alternatives). The appendix also explains the technique for describing changes to processes.