Development of research project reporting framework

Abstract

The reporting framework of a research project involves the periodic reporting of progress by the project’s Principle Investigator (PI). Reports submitted by the PI of each project will be reviewed by the stakeholders of the research institution, followed by the submission of a consolidated report to the funding agency. This project involves the development of a system to facilitate the research project reporting process, which currently is carried out manually. The Research Project Management System (RPMS) will be developed as a system that fully encapsulates the current reporting framework, while exploring various assistive and automative feature implementations to further optimize the reporting process. RPMS will be designed and developed from scratch, with the system’s architecture designed to facilitate maintainability and extensibility. To ensure the quality of RPMS, extensive tests are carried out while soliciting incremental feedback from key project stakeholders and clients. Finally, the project will explore the practical use of Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to assist in the reduction of textual data from reports, further optimizing the research project reporting framework. This report entails the design and development process of RPMS, ending with RPMS going into production for use by SCALE@NTU. The report will also cover all considerations made in system architecture and design, difficulties faced and potential improvements for RPMS.