After wrapping up a recent RPPR submission — one that had a few more bumps than I would have liked — I did what project managers do: I typed up a lessons learned.

If you've submitted anything to NIH in the last year, you already know the landscape has shifted. New SciENcv Common Form requirements for Other Support, ORCID iD linkages that are now a hard submission block, updated forms under FORMS-I — the policy changes have been real, and they've added new layers of complexity to an already demanding process. Our submission ran into a few of those, and layered on top were some classic coordination gaps: section ownership that was assumed rather than confirmed, documents that trickled in at the end instead of early, credential issues that surfaced too late to resolve calmly.

So I turned my notes into something shareable because I suspect your team has felt some version of this too.