Keep in mind that proposals and progress reports are persuasive documents. You write to convince your reader of the merit and integrity of your work. In a proposal, you write to persuade your reader that you have a good idea, a good method for implementing the idea, and the experience necessary to manage the implementation—that you can achieve what you propose. In a progress report, you write to persuade the reader either that you are making good progress on your project or that you realize you aren’t making good progress but know why and are taking appropriate steps to fix the problem.