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 2 (environmental Engineering): The objective is to design and demonstrate the recovery and transport of [copper] mine tailings in a slurry; recover as much of the valuable metals as feasible; treat the tailings to a pH of 7.0 or higher; and design a system to recover the water from the slurry for reuse in the transport and treatment system.

Definitions needed:
Mine Tailings
Slurry
copper mining processes and products
Definitions and information can be found in environmental encyclopedias

Steps:
Determine environmental and regulatory risks and issues
Stabilize tailings
create new impoundment
Move tailings
recover metals
treat tailings to proper pH
recover water

Each step will require different types of information, steps should be broken out into their smallest constituents.

Methods: Each step will require one of several options. It is important to identify existing methods and choose the most appropriate one. If methods are not outlined in encyclopedias it will be necessary to find book and journal literature before you can identify appropriate methodologies.