Run your funded academic projects by work package

Why the work plan from the proposal falls apart once the project starts

A funded research project starts with the work plan promised in the proposal: work packages, the researchers responsible for each, activities spread month by month, and the dates of interim and final reports. Once the project is under way, that plan often stays in the proposal document; the team tracks day-to-day work somewhere else, and when a reporting period arrives, what was done has to be pieced together after the fact.

The team structure adds to the difficulty. The principal investigator, researchers, funded students and advisers work at different institutions with different teaching loads. A delay in one work package holds up the input of another, publications move at their own pace regardless of the project schedule, and these slips often only surface while the report is being written.

YouReply Manage turns the work plan from the proposal into a living project. Work packages become bars on the timeline, reports become milestones, and planned versus actual dates and budget sit in the brief. When a reporting period comes round, you look at the project summary instead of hunting for what was finished.

Capabilities for funded projects

• A timeline grouped by work package

  The Gantt view groups tasks by work package, showing each package row together with the work beneath it. Dependencies are drawn as arrows; if a delay in one package breaks the dates of another, the link is flagged, and the work that determines the project end is highlighted as the critical path.

• The project’s key facts in the brief

  The research brief keeps the project title, research problem, objective, research questions, method, target population, planned sample, planned versus actual dates and the budget field together. A researcher who joins later can read what the project sets out to do without digging up the proposal.

• A project summary ready for reporting periods

  Status breakdown, priority, team workload, work package progress, completion trend and progress rate per period are on one page. When writing an interim report you do not have to remember what closed during the period, and every task keeps a field-by-field change history.

• Roles for a multi-institution team

  The workspace has Administrator, Project Manager, Team Member and Viewer roles; within a project there are Owner, Contributor and Viewer. An adviser or stakeholder who only needs to follow progress is added as a Viewer and cannot change anything. Permission checks are enforced on the server, not in the browser.

• A work plan in periods

  In planned work you can open quarterly or six-monthly working periods and give each one a goal. At the end of a period you can move unfinished work to the next, and the period summary shows what was completed in that period.

Academic research management questions

How do I bring the work plan from the proposal into the project?

Create each work package as a work package and the activities under it as tasks and subtasks; once you enter start and due dates, the bars appear on the timeline. Input relationships between packages are set with “blocks” links. If you run similar projects often, you can put the starting work packages into a project template.

How do I track interim and final reports?

Create each report date as a milestone and attach the tasks for that period. The milestone shows its completion ratio; closing it while work is still open is flagged but not blocked. If extra work is requested after the report, you can reopen the milestone.

How much detail can I track on the budget?

The brief has a field for planned and actual budget; there is no separate budget module, and no expense lines or documents are kept. You can plan work that involves spending, such as equipment, field services or publication fees, as tasks and track each with an owner and due date.

Can researchers from different universities work on the same project?

Yes. People are added to the same workspace, sign in with their central YouReply account and take the Owner, Contributor or Viewer role in the project. The Free plan includes 2 active projects and 5 seats; compare plans on the pricing page based on the seats you need.

Can I keep tracking publications after the project ends?

Yes. In the Publications phase you can track each article as a task, with revision rounds as subtasks. Once all the work is done you can archive the project; projects are not deleted and can be restored when a late revision comes in.

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