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Tips on Getting Started with a Thesis

A thesis is one of the advantages System Design and Management has over other professional degrees such as MBA. However, it is not structured like course work and it can take a lot of work to get started on the right thesis.

There are three key decisions to a thesis: a topic, an advisor and a company (optional). Since you’ve got to start somewhere I started by choosing a topic and then pitching to professors hoping they would use their connections to find a company. It didn’t work.

After several iterations I changed strategy and started with a company. Getting a company to collaborate wasn’t easy, but once that was done the other pieces fell neatly into place.

Another option is to work without a company. An advantage to this approach is that you are more independent. Keep in mind that an independent thesis must rely on publicly available data sources. In engineering most of the data isn’t public but the front end of systems (finished product, website, mobile apps, standards, interfaces etc) is available.

If you do start with a company here are my tips:

· Find a connection in a company that you’d like to work with

· Work your way within the company to find the right person

· Don’t work with a company that thinks of you as a nuisance; establish a vested interest in your research. A great way to establish company commitment is to get financial sponsorship. However even companies that are open with their data are less keen to open their wallets. Set realistic expectations. If you approached the company you have less leverage than if it was the other way around.

· Talk with the company sponsor to understand the pains, needs and opportunities they have. Then choose a few directions and write a proposal document. For each direction the document will include:

o How the research will help the company

o What is the academic angle: thesis name and contribution to research body

o What skills and interests will a potential advisor have? It has to be more specific than just software. For example a thesis on a software company may need one or many of these skills: software strategy, operations and measures, process improvement, statistics etc.

· Circulate the document in the company to see which direction they like most. At the same time circulate it in the university to find potential advisors. Align an advisor and company’s interest and zoom in on one subject.

· Congratulations, now you can start working.

Oh, this is only based on my experience; take it with a pinch of salt. Others may have had different approaches.

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