- Title and authors
- Abstract: quick summary of what you’re proposing, and why it’s worth doing
- Introduction (convince the reader that the rest of the proposal is worth reading)
- What topic do you propose to work on? What have others done on that topic? What remains to be done? Why is it interesting and significant?
- Technical approach (describe the work you’ll do)
- What approach do you intend to use? Why do you think it will work?
- How will you evaluate it? (e.g., theorems and proofs, implementation and experiments)
- Project management (make sure you can actually perform the work)
- What are the major tasks to accomplish?
- Tentative schedule showing when you’ll start and finish each task
- Conclusion (explain why the proposed work is worth doing)
- Summary of what you think you’ll accomplish, and why it’s worthwhile