By far, this is the tool (as in, “thinking tool”) which I recommend most often to PhD students. This diagram summarizes your main research questions, thesis contributions and evidence of their usefulness. While painful to make, this brutal synthesis exercise is also a powerful communication tool. In this post, I explain how it works, its origins, and how making 18+ versions of it helped me through my PhD. Copy the provided template and use it in your PhD supervision meetings or even in the PhD defense!