Intermediate thesis submitted!

Since I last wrote about my thesis, there have been great improvements. I utilised the Succot holiday to improve the research methodology. After this was approved by my advisor, I commenced the pilot study. As I wrote in the thesis:

The pilot study was conducted with a manager responsible inter alia for Priority development, testing the proposed approach and methodology. The objectives of the pilot study were:

• to verify that the questions proposed in section 4.2 are appropriate
• to discover whether there are additional questions which need to be asked
• to determine how much time is needed for an interview
• to determine how much time is needed to analyse the interview
• to determine the suitability of the general structure of the interview.

Originally I reported on the pilot study without any defined structure, but after finding a recent thesis from my department which was accepted, I adopted the structure of the report as appeared in that thesis. I sent this version off to my advisor a few days ago; yesterday evening I received his approval, and so this morning I submitted the thesis to the research committee.

The committee will be sitting towards the end of the month. As with the research proposal, the submission is sent two weeks prior to a meeting of the research committee; two members read the document, make notes and present their findings to the committee which then decides whether to accept or reject the document.

Unlike my first research project, where I adopted the strategy of submitting the first time a version that I think is good but probably not good enough, I have high confidence in this version. As my supervisor wrote yesterday, I think that you and I have spent enough time reviewing this and it now needs some 'external' eyes on it. I think you've really created a document, easy to follow and understand... which is the absolute core skill of a good researcher.

So there's going to be a hold on reporting DBA activity until the end of the month. Ironically, I received an email this morning asking for my quarterly progress report. As my plans for the next quarter depend entirely on the research committee's decision, I think that I will delay sending in the report until the committee's meeting.