The project proposal is one of the first things you write for your dissertation. It sets the foundation for how you will approach your dissertation over the next year. It’s important you consider a lot of factors when writing it. This step-by-step guide will help you do that.
From writing my own project proposal over the summer, I’ve found some useful tips that you can use to write your own.
Sounds good?
Let’s get into it.
What’s a Project Proposal?
A project proposal is a written document describing your dissertation project. It includes:
- A short introduction to the field you are researching
- A brief description of your proposed research
- An explanation of why the research is important
- A description of how your research contributes to the real world
- The aims and objectives of your research
- A comprehensive work plan
- A bibliography for sources and citations.
The Project Proposal Structure
Project proposals can have various structures. Here’s what I would recommend to get started:
- Title page
- Introduction
- Motivation
- External Aspect
- Aims and objectives
- Work plan
- Bibliography
You don’t have to use these exact headings, but this should give you an idea of the flow of your project proposal.
Let’s get into each section.
Title page
This is fairly intuitive. A title page should have a few things:
- Title of your project
- Your name
- Your student details (ID, email address etc)
That’s it.
You don’t need anything fancy going on here. This is a 10 min job if that. Microsoft Word has a function that can add a cover page to your document.
I used Microsoft Word for my project proposal. Highly recommend you to do the same.
Introduction
The goal here is to introduce your dissertation idea, providing relevant context. It should be around a few paragraphs, or longer depending on your project.
Some of you might write your dissertation idea in isolation and call it a day.
Like this:
In my dissertation, I will be researching the effects that technology can have on the worship experience in a church.
Don’t do that.
No one knows your domain as well as you do. Someone reading that will have more questions than answers.
- Where does technology come in?
- What does worship mean?
- What does a worship experience look like?
Your goal in the introduction is to give relevant context to understand your domain. An average reader should be able to understand your research topic.
Here’s how you can do that:
- Start with a statement about your topic that can’t be refuted. This is a great time to bring in a citation to support it.
- Link that statement to a problem, or a gap in the research that hasn’t been explored before.
- Describe why it’s not been considered, or what the possible reasons are for that gap existing.
- Explain why exploring that gap of research is worth it.
- Now, introduce your dissertation idea.
- Describe what your dissertation will consist of.
For most people, this will cover both your introduction and motivation. They often go hand in hand.
Sample Introduction Breakdown
Here’s the introduction that I wrote for my dissertation last year. I’m going to break it down, showing you the places that I wrote well, and where I could have improved it.
Live music performances are an activity that many people take part in. Whether they are performers or part of the audience, the experience that is felt in a live music performance is completely unmatched. A study by Statista [1] shows that nearly 30 million people attended live music performances across the UK in 2018.
I’ve started with a common statement, supported by a citation. This is good. From the get-go, everyone can understand the foundation of the project. Starting with a true statement makes writing the rest of the introduction a lot easier. It’s sort of like writing a mathematical proof and starting with the correct assumptions.
However, audience interactions within music performances haven’t really changed over the years. It’s very much limited to viewing and listening the performance, with an applause at the end, if appropriate.
This explains the research gap; the repetitiveness of audience interactions in musical performances. I could have delved further into this or tried to find a source that supports this.
A study called Open Symphony [2] explored a novel concept, where the audience could influence the music performance through technology. This study showed a positive outcome, with audience members feeling more involved and part of the music performance.
I link a paper that explored a new way for audiences to interact with a musical performance. This is good because it shows 2 things at once:
- My research topic is worth looking into (as one paper has done it already)
- The positive results indicate the potential for further research
If you manage to find a paper that tests your concept, do link it in your introduction. It’s a great way to support your dissertation idea without proving it from first principles.
So far, the narrative is clear. The average reader understands the research project. They may be getting ideas of what the research will be about.
I would like to explore this novel concept in the context of a church. Technology is becoming more involved during church services, with 96% of pastors using a computer at church [3]. Through my dissertation project I want to discover the various ways the congregation could influence a worship session through a software system.
This is a good example of how NOT to link your dissertation idea.
Someone reading that is sitting there wondering how the church enters the conversation. It’s very far removed from the previous paragraphs.
This is a good time to make an important point:
Your first few attempts at academic writing won’t be amazing.
Looking back I can see how poor that link was, but that’s not to discredit the abilities that past Demi had. I go on to fix this issue in my final dissertation, which shows growth. That’s one of the biggest things to gain from writing a dissertation.
Moving on, I link technology to the church well, citing a source that works well here.
I will build a working prototype of a software system that addresses the insights that I have gathered from my primary and secondary research. This prototype will be tested iteratively with a music group, and if given the time, it will be refined.
This is fine. I explain what I will be building in my research group and how I’ll test it. Further detail would have been nice. Alongside an explanation of why a software system is necessary in the first place.
Introduction takeaways.
- Paint a narrative. Your reader wants to understand what your topic is, why it’s important and how it links together.
- Explain your arguments. Use citations for this but use them sparingly, you only need a few good ones to back up your points.
- Justify your decisions. Explain why this decision is better than others. Link to your previous arguments.
Most importantly, don’t go overboard in the introduction section. Your proposal isn’t your dissertation, so you don’t need to write a lot on this section. Write enough to cover the main gist and leave it there.
Less is more.
Motivation
This is where you explain the purpose for your research.
You may not need a separate motivation section. You cover a good amount of this in the introduction. For projects that are a lot more original (e.g. no papers have covered your concept), you may need this.
The motivation is two-fold:
- What is the GAIN from undertaking this research?
- What is the LOSS from not undertaking this research?
If you can explain either side of these questions well, you have a strong motivation. Ideally, you should cover both sides.
What’s the gain?
Consider the following:
- How will your research change the domain?
- What will your research offer to individuals?
- What are the use cases of the insights gathered from the research?
- How could you build upon the deliverables to support and gather the insights?
These questions feed in nicely to the real-world usage of your dissertation.
What’s the loss?
Consider the following:
- What would be unknown if your research doesn’t occur?
- What negative situations could happen if you don’t undertake it?
- What are the cost implications of not researching this topic?
Justifying your idea from this angle gives it a lot more power. It’s not something a lot of students do, so you will stand out more.
Motivation takeaways.
- Think two-fold. What’s the gain from your idea? What’s the loss from not doing your idea?
- Consider critiquing your idea. No idea is without flaws. Show that you understand the flaws of your idea. This can support your dissertation more.
It’s good practice to write a separate motivation section. Even if you don’t plan to include it in your proposal. It broadens your view of your idea before you even get started. And it’s definitely worth including in your final dissertation report.
External Aspect
You want to consider the real-world opportunities that your research can provide.
It’s worth thinking about for every dissertation. That said, it’s a lot more important for master’s dissertation rather than UG. Feel free to skip this section if you’re a UG student.
This section differs greatly from the motivation section. In the motivation, you focused on justifying your research as an idea. Here, you zone in specifically on the practical applications of your research. These can include:
- Submitting it to a conference or journal
- Attending a trade show to demonstrate your research
- How the target audience can apply the research
- General real-world relevance
You wanna look at your research and ask yourself:
- How could someone from my target audience use this?
- How can it further the research in the same domain?
- How can it inspire other individuals in the same area of research?
- What tangible deliverables could someone use from this research?
This section should be one paragraph.
External aspect takeaways
- Think beyond submitting to journals. Whilst it’s an easy way to justify your research, anyone can say that. It’s worth mentioning if you plan to do that, but don’t focus solely on that.
- Plan the tangible deliverables. Don’t say ‘The public could use the deliverable from this project’ if you aren’t planning to build it for that. Don’t say you could submit your paper if you don’t want to.
- Your insights are enough. You don’t have to submit to journals or conferences. The insights from your project are more than enough value for this section.
Aims and Objectives
Your goal here is to clearly define the aims of your research. You also want to define how you will meet those aims (with objectives). This is very important to get right. For context, I spent the most amount of time on this section and the work plan.
Let’s start with your aim.
Aim
The aim is one sentence describing your project at a high level. They are the north star of your project. It’s what markers will assess your final dissertation against.
Stick with 1 aim. It’s a lot easier to handle and you can always break the aim down with your objectives.
Some tips with this:
- Craft a research question. Write a research question based on your project, and let that form the foundation of your aim. Your aim can simply be answering the research question.
- Be as specific as possible. Avoid any form of ambiguity in your aim. If your aim isn’t specific, it’s going to be hard to assess whether you met it at the end of the project.
- Be realistic. Your aim needs to be workable within an academic year (around 8 months, if not less). You aren’t going to be able to complete everything.
Here’s an example of my aim:
The project aims to explore and analyse the different ways the congregation could experience a worship session using technology.
It doesn’t need to be complex. I could have written this better, but I did meet this aim in the end so all is well!
Objectives
Your objectives are how you will meet your aim. They are the practical tasks you will do to meet the aim.
Your objectives may include:
- An elicitation plan: Interviewing people, and finding out what people think about your topic.
- A discussion on design choices: Discussing how you will design your prototype or deliverable.
- Building a prototype: Building a prototype to further test your research.
- Testing: A very important part of every dissertation.
- Gathering results: Representing results in a reasonable way, e.g. charts and graphs.
- Evaluating results: Gathering the insights from the results
- A final argument: Concluding your research with an answer to your research question or aim.
A good number of objectives is around 4 to 6. Don’t have too many otherwise, it will feel overwhelming. Don’t have too little or it won’t be clear how you are going to meet your aim.
More tips:
- Write down your key deliverables. A lot of these deliverables have their own project line that you can turn into objectives. E.g. building a prototype requires you to discuss design choices.
- Don’t reach too far. It’s better to have a smaller objective that you surpass than to have an aspirational one that you never met.
- Make sure they link to the aim. The objectives should all contribute to the aim in some form. Even if the actual objective is fairly isolated from the others.
Here are the objectives that I wrote:
1. Conduct and execute an elicitation plan where I figure out the current state of worship sessions in the church. This will consist of a few interviews with key members of the church.
2. Organise a rehearsal music group that will be used for testing the system. These individuals will be people who already sing/play music in the church.
3. Design and implement a prototype of a software system that addresses the needs of the project
4. Test this system with the rehearsal music group at least once.
5. Evaluate how the prototype performs and refine it using an iterative approach.
Notice that I kept each objective fairly realistic. I already had a plan for the rehearsal group. Also, I made sure to only plan to test it at least once, in case I couldn’t test it more (I couldn’t).
Work plan
This is where you plan out how you will approach the objectives over the academic year. It’s easy to write this work plan as an afterthought, but you need to consider a lot of factors in this plan, such as:
- Coursework deadlines. You are balancing your dissertation with other modules. You can’t let your other modules get in the way of your dissertations, or vice versa. Take this into account when planning work.
- Revision and exams. You need time to revise and prepare for your exams. You can’t cut this time out, so make sure to include it in your dissertation.
- Holidays. No one likes working during the Christmas holidays. I know I don’t. So, consider that in your plan. If you don’t want to work then, don’t schedule work in the holidays. This also applies to other breaks that you plan to take during uni.
- Extenuating circumstances. If you have any health condition or circumstance that may occur during your dissertation, consider them now. Even if you don’t have that, consider the possibility of an EC. Plan for it, make sure you’re covered.
Structuring the work plan
Here’s what you should include:
- A clear breakdown of the months. Divide the year into chunks, and assign related tasks in each month. Think about what you need to do before you can do other tasks. E.g you can’t start writing the dissertation until you complete your research.
- A diagram. Diagrams are essential in this section. Consider using a Gantt chart or any other diagram to represent the academic year and the tasks you will be working on.
- Contingencies. As mentioned above, mention your limitations, and explain how you will plan around them. Make this work plan as realistic as possible, with limitations considered.
Breakdown of my work plan
I addressed my work plan like so:
- I established 2 phases of work: Prototype and Refinement.
- Prototype phase was from October to January
- Refinement phase was from February to March.
Having phases of work is a really great idea. I actually recommend more than 2 phases, ideally 3 if you can (I didn’t really account for a writing phase here).
Outside of this, I split my project into 3 sections: Technical, Human and Deliverables.
- The technical section consists of the design and development of the prototype, with testing and maintenance.
- The human section consists of all forms of data collection. Both primary (interviews and surveys) and secondary (reading academic papers and other sources).
- The deliverables section includes all forms of written deliverables for the project. E.g. the project proposal, ethics document, interim report and the final dissertation.
This section idea worked well. It actually helped a lot with slotting tasks into each section. I’m planning on doing something similar for my master’s dissertation.
To end my work plan, I drew up a Gantt chart, showing the distribution of work across the year.
I only did this to say I included a diagram. It’s kinda pointless if you don’t follow it, which admittedly I didn’t (it was too unrealistic). Either create a diagram of your workflow that you will attempt to follow or don’t create one at all.
It’s completely fine if work takes longer than expected, that’s normal. Markers usually expect a revision of your work plan in the interim, so don’t stress if things go left.
Work plan takeaways
- BE REALISTIC. I should put this in caps and bold. It’s for your own good. You are better off planning that something will take longer than it should than it taking longer than you planned.
- Make it adaptable. I argue it’s better to have procedures and routines that you will follow if something happens. Rather than to hardcode your time with no wiggle room.
- Give yourself a week before the deadline. Where possible, try to have everything to do with your diss (15k words etc.) done a week before the official deadline. Chances are, that week could be the difference between you passing and getting a high grade in your diss. The buffer is helpful.
Bibliography
Here you keep a list of the sources that you cite in your dissertation. Luckily, most text editors have functionality that does this for you. You just need to add the references in. Here’s how to do that in Word.
Some tips:
- Check your citation format. Different degree subjects and universities use different formats. E.g. CompSci typically uses IEEE. You want to make sure you adhere to the correct format for your degree. Double check with your supervisor.
- Don’t stress about citation counts. You don’t need a huge number of citations for your project proposal. Focus on the sources that support your point heavily. I only had 3 citations in my proposal.
- Double-check citation numbers. Word is generally very good with this, but just in case it messes it up, check that each number refers to the right source.
That’s it! 🎉
Phew, that was a journey.
Here’s another quick reminder that your proposal doesn’t need to be long. This guide in itself is over 3000 words. Your proposal probably shouldn’t exceed 2000. Specific word counts will vary between universities.
I hope this guide has given you everything you need to write your project proposal.
Feel free to share your dissertation idea with me on Twitter! I would love to hear what you’re working on. You should probably learn about the common myths you have about dissertations, as it may be holding you back.
And of course, share this guide with anyone who you think will need this.
In a byte,
Demi The Techie 👩🏾💻
