Over the past couple of years I had the chance to follow closely the process through which PhD works are designed and written, and I noticed a couple of patterns that are independent of the domain.

To get a PhD, you have to pass an exam. Actually it is not just an exam, it is a defense. A thesis defense. That is, the whole point of the exam is for the candidate to successfully defend his thesis.

Contrary to popular belief, a thesis is not a document, it is one statement. There indeed is an accompanying document, but its job is to provide a detailed discourse and evidence for why the thesis statement is important and correct.

You can think of a thesis as a demarcation of a territory and the rest of the discourse as a defense mechanism. A broad thesis defines a broad territory, while a concise one defines a narrow territory. At first sight, you might be tempted to cover as much territory as possible, but the broader yours is, the more difficult it is to defend. A good general chooses the terrain that matches his army.

While the size of the territory is an issue, the value of a territory is only rarely given by its dimensions. Most of the time, the value comes from what lies in that territory. The territory needs to be important enough so that people desire to attack it. After all, there is no defense without an attack, or at least the possibility of an attack. Thus, the first requirement for a thesis is to address a problem that is considered relevant.

The second requirement is for the thesis to be clear enough so that it leaves no room for interpretation. My template for a thesis looks like this:

To solve this we need to do that

This is probably not the only way you can write one, but if you do it along these lines, you make clear what the problem is (this), what the solution is (that), and most of all you leave no doubt that you in fact stand for something.

Once you have an important and clearly delimited territory, your defense must go in concert with it. If the defense line can be avoided, it is of no use to have deep trenches. The Marginot line was the greatest defense system ever created, but it was rendered irrelevant given that the battle was not carried out there. Thus, you should make sure there are no cracks in your defense, and you should make sure your defense cannot be circumvented.

Many times the design of the thesis and of the accompanying defense are tackled only during a final dedicated period of writing. This is not an optimal approach.

One thing that you should remember is that the PhD defense is not just a conglomerate of smaller pieces. It needs to be designed into a coherent piece. Like any design, the design of a PhD defense requires time to mature. Thus, it is best to start with it from the very beginning, rather than postpone it to the very end. Most probably you won’t come up with the final thesis from the start, but the process of formulating the thesis, of finding cracks in the defense and of evolving both them as you go forward and learn more, is the one that will get you ready for the final defense.

While there are several similarities between PhD defense and warfare, there is at least one important difference: unlike in real wars, both the terrain and the defense are completely under your control. You are the one that defines the terms and it is your duty to make sure the battle will be carried out where and how it best suites you.