Milestones and grants

A research milestone belongs to an organization and a parent work package. It carries a status and revision, with room for the grant reference, due date, completed studies, approval reference and decision date. These details matter together: a submitted milestone should be checked against the package revision and its supporting work, and a completed milestone should have a clear approval path. The grant manager owns the submission; an independent reviewer owns the decision.

The status path includes draft, submitted, approved, rejected and completed. Those words help the team distinguish material being prepared from evidence ready for a decision. A rejection sends the grant manager back to the record and its supporting work. The guarded approval path marks a milestone Completed only after the independent decision and evidence check, with both kept in the same package context.

• Submission. Grant Manager links the milestone to its package and records the grant details and completed study count.
• Decision. Independent Reviewer examines the package revision, attachments and claimed progress before approving or rejecting the milestone.
• Completion. The guarded approval path records the completed state only after the approval reference and supporting evidence have been checked.

Agree which grant reference belongs on each milestone and who can verify it against the institution’s grant source. Define how the team counts a completed study, and what supporting task or attachment a reviewer should expect. Make the due date and approval reference part of the handoff, rather than information reconstructed after the decision. The grant source remains a connection to set up if the team needs an authoritative external comparison.

Decide who resolves a mismatch between a milestone and its parent package. A package revision may change while the milestone is waiting in the submitted queue. The reviewer should use the current supporting revision, ask for a new check when it differs, and record the reason for a rejection or return through the review trail.

A grant manager prepares a milestone for a study phase. The record points to an accepted package and includes a grant reference, due date and completed study count. The owner has attached evidence to that same package. Before submission, the grant manager checks that the count corresponds to recorded task completion. The Independent Reviewer then reads the submitted milestone beside the package revision and its attachments.

If the count includes a study still in progress, the reviewer rejects the request and records why. The grant manager corrects the evidence and submits a new revision for review. On approval, the approval reference and decision date make the outcome traceable. Operations Analyst can then tell whether a completed milestone has the decision and package context behind it.

• Submitted Milestones — The grant evidence awaiting a person’s decision, with due date and parent package.
• Milestone Status Board — Milestones grouped by status so rejected work remains visible to the grant team.

Rehearse milestone review and examine the data model.