Dissertation Project Plan
Your dissertation will likely be the largest piece of investigative research and writing you will do as part of your degree course.
The size of this project means it cannot be completed overnight or in a 24-hour writing sprint.
To achieve the best results, you will need to consistently commit time and effort to your research, reflection, and writing activities in order.
This makes your dissertation project plan an essential first step in the research process.
What is a Dissertation Project Plan?
A dissertation project plan is a framework document that sets out how you will manage your dissertation and meet the submission deadlines set by your course leader.
The project plan divides each dissertation activity into a clearly defined stage and allocates a deadline by when the activity must be completed.
The Dissertation Project Plan
To write a dissertation project plan that will be useful for you and help you achieve your goals it’s important to take a methodical approach.
Your project plan will define all the research, investigating, and writing activities you will do as part of your dissertation. Listing all the activities you need to complete and setting deadlines and goals for each.
When writing your dissertation project plan your will write down all the activities required as part of your research process, investigation, and submission and then allocate sufficient time to complete each activity.
Stage 1 – Identify all your activities
Dissertations can take many different routes depending on your topic and research approach.
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to planning but in developing a project plan which will work for your dissertation the first step will be to identify all the activities you must complete.
Start with your dissertation brief which was provided by your lecturer and the notes you made when your lecturer explained the assignment.
Using your notes and the assignment brief make a list of all the individual activities that must be completed as part of the dissertation research.
I favour a chronological approach to mapping these types of activities. Although not all activities will be completed sequentially, I find it helpful to think through the project from start to finish and develop a flow that makes sense to me.
Every dissertation project plan will be unique but there are likely to be some elements that will be common to most dissertations:
1. Choosing your topic
2. Developing your research question
3. Preliminary research
4. Writing your research proposal
5. Applying for ethics approval for your research proposal
6. Reading the available research
7. Conducting primary research
8. Evaluating the data and results
9. Writing your dissertation
10. Submitting your dissertation
You may find you have split some of these activities into smaller sub-activities, this is fine.
It is your project plan.
When complete it should make sense to you and give you a sense of achievement and progression as you move through and complete each activity.
Stage 2 – Time Allocation
Managing your time is an essential part of successfully completing your dissertation.
For postgraduate degrees, you may have around 12 weeks to work on your dissertation and submit it.
12 weeks feels like a long time, and it can be easy to take a relaxed approach to your research and writing. Don’t be fooled, there is a lot to do, and 12 weeks isn’t as long as you might think.
Using your time efficiently and steadily across the whole project will help you meet your deadlines and create progress while also avoiding panic and burnout as submission deadlines loom closer.
Time management is a necessity when it comes to the planning process of a dissertation.
Project Milestones
A project milestone is a fixed point you can use to measure your progress towards completion.
They are non-negotiable deadlines that you can use to hold yourself accountable. These can act as external drivers to complete specific elements of your project in a timely manner.
When planning a research project like this I start with the big milestone deadlines.
These will include your final submission deadline, any scheduled 1-1 sessions with your supervisor, and ethics approval. There may be other deadlines that are unique to your proposal.
Document and highlight these dates in your calendar.
Project Deliverables
Project deliverables are the tasks and activities that you must complete in order to complete the project and meet all the project milestones.
These are short, measurable goals that you can use as benchmarks to keep you motivated and track your progress on the way to your goal.
Depending on your topic, when you start, and how much you need to do you will need to set aside varying amounts of time for different activities.
Once you have a good idea of all the activities required to complete your dissertation, you can plan the time needed for various tasks by creating one deadline for each.
Remember, each activity may need to be allocated a different length of time and some activities will run in tandem with others. Give yourself some flexibility to accommodate change, sickness, and unexpected interruptions.
Stage 3 – Ask for feedback
Your tutor, lecturer or dissertation supervisor has a lot of experience supporting and coaching students through the dissertation assignment. Leverage their knowledge and experience.
When you’ve written your project plan draft ask to meet with your supervisor and get their feedback on your plan.
They will be able to advise if you have captured all the essential activities required if you have allocated enough time for each activity and you will be able to schedule your 1-1 sessions so you can fix your feedback sessions.
Take the advice and guidance of your supervisor on board and incorporate it into your dissertation project plan.
Stage 4 – Implementation
You’ve made your plan, checked in with your supervisor and now it’s time to get on with implementing your plan.
Why are Dissertation Project Plans Important?
Dissertation project plans can help keep you focussed and working steadily towards your objectives and submission of your assignment.
The outline of your dissertation project will help you focus on the original objectives and define the time frames for each of the activities required to complete your dissertation.
Using the project plan, you can follow tangential exploration within the boundaries and framework of the project if it allows.
If your timeline shows you don’t have time for this type of exploration you can make a note to come back and investigate at a later time. This ensures you don’t sacrifice your timeline and objectives for activities not included in the original scope.
The project milestones provide accountability and are an important feature in your project plan.
Whether your accountability measures are set by yourself, deadlines enforced by your supervisor, or are defined by the submission deadline they set the expectations of completion and delivery of the dissertation you set out to produce.
Risks of not having a Dissertation Project Plan
The size of your dissertation project can mean it’s easy to wander down interesting tangential research paths where you spend too much time on one or more sections of the project.
In project management language this is called scope creep and is where you end up including things in your project that were not part of the original plan.
There are some benefits and risks to allowing yourself to take this tangential meander into side topics.
You may find some interesting and valuable research results that can add value to your research but equally if you spend time on topics, not part of your original plan you will limit the time you can spend on activities that are required for you to complete your submission on time.
In Summary
The dissertation is probably the largest assignment you will complete as part of your degree course. This makes it exciting and a little daunting.
Make a plan that breaks down the assignment into manageable deliverables, set yourself a time to complete each task, and focus on one task at a time. You will be surprised by how the momentum builds.
