Conclusions about what isn't being said

The other day, I started rereading "The cardinal of the Kremlin", which is one of Tom Clancy's better novels (still, it could do with some strict editing that would remove 15-20%). What caught my attention this time was Jack Ryan's role as an analyst, where he says something like "it's not so much my job to analyse what was said, but rather to analyse what was not said". It's always easier to look at what there is as opposed to looking at what isn't - what is being hidden, what isn't being shown and so on. This attitude percolates down to SQL where almost all queries select data which is stored within the database; it's harder and less intuitive to find what isn't there (for example, customers who haven't purchased anything in the last year).

With this on my mind, my attention wandered to the conclusions chapter of my thesis, where I had analysed points which had become clear during the interviews. I now thought that it would be a good idea to discuss points which hadn't arisen, for example inter-departmental co-operation. Continuing this train of thought, I realised that I should take each topic which had been presented in the literature review and discuss their influence on the results. This gives the section a structure, which is always important, but also gives an answer to a question which might be asked in the viva interview: why did you present literature on a given topic then not discuss it in light of the interview results?

The material which I had written previously provided about 50% of what was needed; having the structure of the literature review topics made it easier to focus on what could be concluded. Whilst doing so, I noticed one point that would be good for the 'recommendations for future research' section - business competence of IT workers. I started looking for papers on this topic and found several, although I have yet to read them and so do not know how relevant they will be to the thesis.

My supervisor had written that he intended to look at the current version of the thesis on Friday, which was the same day that I had this insight. I quickly posted a note to our message board, saying that I intended to restructure this section, which is one of the critical ones. In the evening, I saw that he had posted a note to say that he would wait for the new version. I uploaded the thesis and was rewarded with the comment that he will look at it over the weekend and provide feedback on Monday. So now I leave the doctorate for a few days and concentrate on other matters.