Writing a research proposal

I took this seminar course whose aim is basically to give you a set of tools to guide your research and fine tune the way you conduct research. Three take homes I got from this seminar are:
1) When to reference and when not to reference when you write a paper
2) Giving a presentation: What needs to be taken care of, the good and bad of a few case presentations.
3) Research proposal: Writing one effectively.

I will just discuss the third take home. Here's a good article on writing a research proposal. Find a pdf version here.

To summarize the article:
There are two things to writing a research proposal - a) The writing part of it b) The content and structure part of it.

The writing part is similar to writing any document - The document should be coherent, have a flow, should be concise and also be easily understandable to the targetted audience.

The content can be summarized as follows and is very similar to the structure of a thesis:
a) Abstract - What is it that you propose to do in your research summarized briefly in a paragraph.
b) Introduction - i) Should clearly define the objectives of the study or research to be conducted
ii) Should establish the context of the study and its significance and/or contribution practically(application) and theoretically(model/technique development/formulation of the problem, etc).
iii) The main problem features should be described and the scope of the problem clearly delineated.
c) Literature review - Should include all contributions from literature relevant to the problem area. The contributions should not be rambling but should be expressed concisely though effectively.
d) Solution Methodology - Should be described in the context of what is in the literature. Should narrow down a few solution techniques and the pros and cons of this subset of techniques should be briefly described.
e) Data - What data do you think is required for this problem. How are you going to get it(Experiments/data collection, etc).
f) Discussion - Summarize the research briefly. Discuss the pros and cons of the solution methodology adopted, data to be used, etc.

Usually a research proposal is made to obtain grants and funding for the research. So a research proposal should be written in a manner that highlights the significance of the research and its contribution. Hence the emphasis on both the 'writing' and the 'content'.