Figure 16-3 sample Title Page for a formal proposal

PROPOSAL FOR EXTENSION OF NASA
GRANT NSG 1306

MODELS AND TECHNIQUES FOR EVALUATING THE
EFFECTIVENESS OF AIRCRAFT COMPUTING SYSTEMS

IN REPLY REFER TO DRDA
8I-2096-P1

Submitted to the

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER

HAMPTON, VIRGINIA 23365

Submitted by the

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING LABORATORY

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

ANN ARBOR MICHIGAN 48109

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR John F Meyer

PROPOSED STARTING DATE 1 July 1990

PROPOSED DURATION 1 year

AMOUNT REQUESTED $39,932

Abstract

Like other Abstracts, the Abstract of a proposal is short, often 200 words or less. In a short proposal
addressed to someone within the writer's institution, the Abstract may be located on the Title Page; m a
long proposal, the Abstract will usually occupy a page by itself following the Title Page

The Abstract is a critical part of the proposal because it provides a short Overview and Summary of the entire proposal; it

is the only text in the proposal seen by some readers. The Abstract should briefly define the problem and
its importance, the objectives of the project, the method of evaluation, and the potential impact of the
project; it normally does not define the cost. A longer treatment of Abstracts appears in Chapter 18.

Table of Contents

The Table of Contents lists the sections and subsections of the proposal and their page numbers.

Introduction

The Introduction of the proposal, like the Foreword of the technical report, orients a nonspecialist to the
subject and purpose of the document. It explains why the project is important and should provide the
following pieces of information in terms appropriate for a managerial audience.

1 The problem being addressed (perhaps denning what it isn't as well as what it is)

2 The purpose or objectives of the proposed project

3 The significance of the proposed project

If the project is simple, the Introduction may also include some relevant details which would belong m
the Background section of a more complicated proposal.

If you are responding to a Request for Proposals (RFP), your approach to the definition of the
problem and the purpose or objectives of your proposal should reflect the thrust of the RFP.

Background

As a separate section, the Background allows you to fill in important technical details inappropriate for the
nonspeciahst readers of the Abstract and Introduction. The Background provides a place to discuss the
history of the problem, to survey previous work on your topic (a survey leading up, of course, to some
problem or gap in the previous work), and to place this project in the particular context of previous work
you may have done on the problem. If the proposal extends earlier work you have done, be sure to show
why your previous work needs to be continued and how the proposed work differs from it. Do not spend
a great deal of time justifying your earlier efforts and budgets; concentrate on the new work proposed.
If previous work has been done on your project, you need to demonstrate that you are aware of it and
understand its importance and limitations. (Funders don't want to pay you to reinvent the wheel.) You
usually do this in a subsection called Literature Survey or Previous Work, m which you demonstrate
your competence by carefully selecting and evaluating the works you cite. If you can't select the most
crucial items for your project and briefly show why they're crucial, you're probably not expert enough to
know what you need to do and how best to do it. Also, you won't be able to show how
your work fits into the larger scheme of things, how it builds on previous work and goes beyond it, how
it is original and contributes to knowledge in the field.

Description of Proposed Activity

The Description of Proposed Activity is the most important section of the whole proposal. It describes
what you want to do and how you intend to do it"

1 The plan for reaching the stated objectives

2 The plan for evaluating the results

3 The schedule for completing the work

This section will be evaluated carefully by the proposal's reviewers, who will be knowledgeable m the
field Their job is to eliminate all proposals whose objectives or plans are inappropriate or unclear or not
well thought out. Thus, your job as a writer is to convince them that you are doing what needs to be done
and are doing it in the most careful and thorough way.

When preparing the Description section, you should assume that you are writing for a critical,
hostile audience, for you are. You should provide all the details a knowledgeable critic would need to
assess your argument:

1 The assumptions on which your work is based

2 The approach or hypothesis you are following

3 The specific problem(s) or question(s) you are trying to address

4 The particular work and evaluation methods you are using

5 The appropriateness of your methods for the problem proposed

In addition to providing these items, you may need to justify them, especially if there might be any
question or controversy about them. It is particularly important to demonstrate the appropriateness of
your method for solving the problem posed. If this isn't clear, probably nothing else will matter.

You also need to convince the critical reader that your proposed schedule is appropriate and
realistic. You don't want to propose to do too much, given your time and resources, or it will seem that
you have a poor assessment of the project and don't really know what you are doing. One way to
demonstrate that your schedule is realistic is to spell it out very specifically so that the critical reader can
easily see its merits and the care and thoroughness you put into determining it. If you demonstrate that
you've really thought of everything, carefully, you're halfway to success.

Institutional Resources and Commitments

If you are proposing a project that requires special equipment, one important factor in your ability to do
the proposed work is having access to that equipment. Having this equipment already available at your
institution is a big plus for your proposal, since a funder could pay you much less to do the work than it
would have to pay someone who had to buy the equipment. Thus, it is to your advantage to list relevant
institutional resources. Further, funding agencies often feel that proposers work harder (and institutions
monitor them more carefully) if the proposer's institution has resources invested in the project.

List of References

If your references are so extensive that they may interrupt the text if you insert them as you go along, you
may want to set them up in a separate section. You may also want to do this if the previous work is
especially important and you want your reviewers to see that you have cited all the "right" items. As a
rule of thumb, if you have more than six references, you might consider a List of References, placed
before the sections on Personnel and Budget. The references may be listed consecutively as they appear
in the text, with the author's name m normal order (first name or initials first), or they may be listed
alphabetically with the author's last name first.

Personnel

The purpose of the Personnel section is to explain who will be doing what and to demonstrate that the
people listed for a proposed activity are competent to do it This is normally accomplished in two
subsections, one outlining the responsibilities of the individual participants and the structure for
coordinating their activities and one providing short biographical sheets (usually no more than two pages)
for the mam participants. The biographical sheets should focus on only the relevant qualifications of the
participants.

Budget

Like the Personnel section, the Budget section has two purposes: to explain what things will cost and to
justify and explain individual expenditures, especially when these are not obvious. The Budget is usually
summarized in a table, such as Table 16-1. (A simple proposal may have a much simpler budget.) The
typical headings m a Budget are Personnel, Equipment, Supplies, Travel, Computer Time (if relevant),
and Indirect Costs Items typically included under these headings are listed m Table 16-2. Note that not
all proposals will need to include all items, but the items listed in Table 16-2 should be treated in a
proposal's budget when appropriate

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