Once you have done some general background reading, you may be ready to define your terms and methods. In some cases this step will require you to break a long complicated project into its constituent steps and sometimes it will require defining which of the many methods available is best for this situation.

An Example:

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Project: Design a facility to synthesize human insulin on a large scale.

Definitions needed:
Insulin - Pancreatic Hormone which facilitates the utilization and storage of glucose in the body -
Concise Chemical and Technical Dictionary.
New York: Chemical Publishing Co, 1974.
More extensive expanations can be found in chemical encyclopedias.

Steps:
Create Insulin (only one major step)

Methods:
According to Kirk-Othmer there are two currently used methods to synthesize insulin. One process uses yeast and one process uses bacteria.