A Worked Thesis Schedule
Fourteen weeks of teaching require a proposed timeline and never show one. This is the one that exists — a student's own project file, read here as a plan: what it puts first, what it treats as a separate piece of work, and what it quietly assumes about the calendar.
Where this schedule came from, and what it is not
The supplied teaching material asks, in more than one place, for a proposed timeline for the research. It asks for a timetable or project plan as a component of the proposal's methodology block. It tells you to create a timetable to avoid last-minute panics. It does not, in fourteen weeks, teach scheduling, name a tool, define a dependency, or supply a single worked plan of its own.
This schedule is not the subject's answer to that. It is student work — one learner's plan for their own thesis, built in a commercial scheduling application and supplied both as the application's own file and as the printed chart that file produces. The tool is a named product and is referred to here generically. The library records the same student population elsewhere: an earlier submission asked for a process map with a timeline produced the map and no timeline, and that page is at writing a thesis plan. This is the timeline, made later and in a scheduling tool.
The full task list, as printed
THE SCHEDULE, TRANSCRIBED FROM THE PRINTED CHART
| ID | Task name | Duration | Start | Finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Thesis Plan | 255 days? | Mon 2/03/20 | Fri 19/02/21 |
| 1 | Initiation | 11 days | Mon 2/03/20 | Sun 15/03/20 |
| 2 | Title Page | 10 days | Mon 2/03/20 | Sun 15/03/20 |
| 3 | Introduction | 10 days? | Mon 2/03/20 | Thu 26/03/20 |
| 4 | Literature Review | 51 days | Mon 16/03/20 | Mon 25/05/20 |
| 5 | Synthesize Stream 1 & Stream 2 | 45 days? | Fri 27/03/20 | Mon 27/07/20 |
| 6 | Defining Gaps | 10 days? | Mon 20/04/20 | Fri 5/06/20 |
| 7 | Research Method Design | 22 days | Sun 3/05/20 | Sat 30/05/20 |
| 8 | Research Questions and Hypothisis | 2 wks | Sun 3/05/20 | Sat 16/05/20 |
| 9 | Design Data collection methods | 2 wks | Sun 17/05/20 | Sat 30/05/20 |
| 10 | Ethical Approval | 5 days? | Mon 1/06/20 | Sun 7/06/20 |
| 11 | Research Sources and Methods | 15 days? | Sun 15/11/20 | Thu 3/12/20 |
| 12 | Data Collection | 4 wks | Sun 15/11/20 | Sat 12/12/20 |
| 13 | Data Analysis | 15 days? | Sat 5/12/20 | Thu 31/12/20 |
| 14 | Coding | 5 days? | Sun 27/12/20 | Wed 6/01/21 |
| 15 | Results | 10 days? | Mon 4/01/21 | Tue 19/01/21 |
| 16 | Discussions | 5 days? | Mon 18/01/21 | Mon 25/01/21 |
| 17 | Conclusion | 7 days? | Mon 25/01/21 | Tue 2/02/21 |
| 18 | Appendices | 4 days? | Tue 2/02/21 | Sat 6/02/21 |
| 19 | Reference | 3 days? | Wed 3/02/21 | Sat 6/02/21 |
| 20 | Acknowledgement | 2 days? | Thu 4/02/21 | Sun 7/02/21 |
| 21 | Contents page(s) | 5 days? | Mon 8/02/21 | Fri 12/02/21 |
| 22 | Summary/abstract | 3 days? | Tue 9/02/21 | Thu 11/02/21 |
| 23 | Cover | 2 days? | Thu 11/02/21 | Fri 12/02/21 |
| 24 | Submission of Research | 2 days? | Thu 18/02/21 | Fri 19/02/21 |
Line 0 is the project summary. Lines 1-24 are the tasks. The spellings "Hypothisis" and "Synthesize" and the plural "Discussions" are the student's and are reproduced unaltered. Literature Review (4) and Research Method Design (7) are summary tasks with children beneath them, and Research Sources and Methods (11) is treated on the chart as the parent of Data Collection (12).
Three tasks state their duration in weeks — Research Questions and Hypothisis, Design Data collection methods, and Data Collection — while every other line is in days. Mixed units on one chart are worth noticing before you read anything else off it, because they are the first sign that the durations were typed in as text rather than derived from a calendar.
What the plan front-loads
The clearest thing about this schedule is where it puts its weight. Literature Review is the longest task on the chart at 51 days. Beneath it sits a 45-day synthesis of two literature streams. Taken together the reading and synthesis work is larger than anything else in the plan by a wide margin — larger than the design phase, larger than collection, larger than the entire write-up tail.
That matches what the subject says about itself. The material returns to the literature review more often than to any other topic, treats it as the thing that establishes the gap, and requires the gap to be argued in the proposal and then restated at the end of the review. A plan that gives the review a fifth of its elapsed span is a plan whose author had absorbed the emphasis. Compare the shape of the review itself at structuring a literature review.
It also matches something less comfortable. The literature review is the phase you can start on day one without anyone's permission, which makes it the easiest thing to schedule generously and the easiest thing to keep doing when the next phase looks harder. A long review at the front of a plan is a good sign; a long review that has not finished by the time the design work must start is the most common way a research schedule fails quietly.
What it sequences, and what it treats as discrete
Read the task names in date order and the plan describes a recognisable arc. It is not the seven-stage or ten-step model the subject teaches — it is the student's own — but it maps onto the same territory.
- Initiation
- Literature review and synthesis
- Method design
- Ethical approval
- Collection
- Analysis and coding
- Results, discussion, conclusion
- Assembly and submission
The interesting decisions are about what gets its own line. A task that is separately named on a chart is a task with a start, a finish and an owner; a task folded into something larger has none of those. This plan separates several things that many plans bury.
Four things this plan gives their own line
Ethical Approval
Five days, 1 to 7 June 2020, sitting on its own between design and collection. It is not an attribute of the design task and not a note in a margin. It is work with a duration and a finish date.
Synthesize Stream 1 & Stream 2
The plan reads two bodies of literature and then schedules the act of joining them as a separate 45-day task. Synthesis as a distinct piece of work, rather than something assumed to happen while reading, is an unusually mature move.
Defining Gaps
Ten days for identifying the gap, scheduled inside the literature phase rather than after it. The subject treats the gap as the pivot of a proposal; this plan treats it as an activity with time attached.
Contents, Cover, Reference, Acknowledgement
Four separate front- and back-matter tasks, each with its own duration. Most schedules treat these as free. This one does not, and anyone who has assembled a thesis in the last week before submission will recognise why that is sensible.
The two decisions most worth copying
Both are worth stating plainly because they are decisions, not accidents. Plenty of otherwise tidy research schedules show collection starting in week three with approval nowhere on the chart, and plenty give the literature review two weeks because two weeks is what fits. This plan does neither. Whatever else is wrong with it — and the defects are catalogued in full on the companion page — those two calls are right.
The approval sequence itself is set out at seeking ethics clearance, and what a committee actually does with an application at ethics review and approval processes. Note one thing before you copy the five-day allowance: five days is this plan's estimate of its own approval, and the only quantified approval duration anywhere in the supplied material describes a different case entirely — five rounds of amendment over more than five months, for insider research on a dependent group. Neither figure is a planning number.
The shape of the tail
Ten of the twenty-four tasks — Results through to Submission of Research — fall between 4 January and 19 February 2021, a stretch of roughly six weeks. Their stated durations run from two to ten days each. This is where the plan is busiest in task count and thinnest in elapsed time.
THE FINAL TEN TASKS AND WHAT THEY ARE
| Task | Stated duration | Kind of work |
|---|---|---|
| Results | 10 days? | Writing — reporting what was found |
| Discussions | 5 days? | Writing — interpreting what was found |
| Conclusion | 7 days? | Writing — closing the argument |
| Appendices | 4 days? | Assembly |
| Reference | 3 days? | Assembly |
| Acknowledgement | 2 days? | Assembly |
| Contents page(s) | 5 days? | Assembly |
| Summary/abstract | 3 days? | Writing — and correctly placed near the end |
| Cover | 2 days? | Assembly |
| Submission of Research | 2 days? | The deadline itself |
Kind of work is this library's classification of the transcribed task names, not a label the source applies.
Four of the ten are writing tasks and six are assembly. That balance is the plan's own judgement about the last six weeks of a thesis, and it is a defensible one as far as it goes — the front and back matter really does take time, and scheduling it is better than assuming it away. What is missing from the tail is treated on the companion page, and it is the largest single omission in the plan.
What is not on this chart at all
How to use this artefact
Not as a template. The durations belong to one study whose topic, method, sample and institutional context are nowhere stated, and a plan is only as transferable as the study behind it. Nothing in the source describes the research this schedule was written for.
What to take from it, and what to leave
- Take the decision to give ethical approval its own line, with its own dates, before collection
- Take the decision to schedule synthesis and gap definition as work rather than as by-products of reading
- Take the decision to put front and back matter on the chart instead of assuming it is free
- Take the placement of the abstract near the end, which matches the subject's instruction to write it last
- Leave every duration — 255 days, 51 days, 5 days for approval, four weeks of collection are that plan's own
- Leave the calendar assumptions, which are examined in detail on the companion page
- Add the tasks it omits: the proposal itself, editing and re-writing, and recommendations
The constructive version — how to build a schedule of your own from the subject's scattered instructions plus what this chart demonstrates — is at scheduling a research project. The proposal component that requires a timeline in the first place, and the resource statement that travels with it, is at proposal timetable and resources.
What to carry forward
- This is the only worked research schedule in the supplied dataset, and it is student work produced without any teaching on scheduling.
- Its two best decisions are structural: ethical approval as a discrete task ahead of collection, and a heavily front-loaded literature phase.
- It names activities most plans bury — synthesis, gap definition, contents, cover, acknowledgements — and gives each a duration.
- It has no task for the proposal, none for editing and re-writing, and none for recommendations.
- Every figure on it is one student's estimate for one thesis. Borrow the activity list; price it against your own study.
Frequently asked questions
Is this schedule a model I should copy?
Copy its structure, not its numbers. The decisions worth taking are the discrete ethical-approval task ahead of collection, the front-loaded literature phase, and the naming of front and back matter as real work. Every duration on the chart is one student's estimate for one thesis whose topic and method the source never states.
Why is the literature review the longest task?
The plan gives it 51 days, with a further 45-day synthesis task beneath it, which makes reading and synthesis the largest block on the chart. That matches the subject's own repeated emphasis on the review as the thing that establishes the gap. It is also the phase that can start immediately without anyone's approval, which makes it easy to schedule generously.
How long should I allow for ethics approval?
This plan allows five days. The only other quantified figure anywhere in the supplied material describes a single case that took five rounds of amendment over more than five months, for insider research on a dependent group. Neither is a planning figure. Ask your own approving body for its current timelines and put float in front of the milestone.
What does the question mark after most of the durations mean?
It is the scheduling application's estimated-duration marker, which the tool applies by default and expects you to clear as an estimate firms up. Seventeen of the twenty-four tasks still carry it, as does the project summary line. It is reproduced here exactly as printed.
Where is the research proposal on this schedule?
It is not on it. The plan begins with Title Page and Introduction and runs through to submission, with no task producing the proposal itself. That is a notable absence given that the proposal is the deliverable the surrounding teaching week is about.
Does the plan get the abstract in the right place?
By date, yes — Summary/abstract finishes 11/02/21, near the end of the plan, which matches the subject's instruction that the abstract is written last because it summarises everything else. The plan's list order disagrees with its date order, since Title Page is listed second and scheduled first; that tension is examined on the companion defects page.
References and source attribution
- An anonymised student thesis schedule supplied with the teaching material: a commercial scheduling application's project file and its printed Gantt chart, twenty-five lines, dated Sat 8/02/20. Used as observed practice, not as a model answer.
- The supplied teaching source: weekly study notes, slide decks and assessment activities for a master's-level research methods subject in project management. Author, institution and year not stated in the supplied files.
- Naoum, S. G. 2013, Dissertation Research & Writing for Construction Students, 3rd ed., Routledge.
- O'Leary, Z. 2017, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, London.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- What activities belong on a thesis schedule?
- How should I sequence ethics approval against data collection?
- How much of a research schedule should the literature review take?
- What does a worked research Gantt chart actually look like?
- Which parts of a borrowed project schedule are safe to reuse?