PhD Completion Milestones

Dr. Laurie Williams

(updated 6/16/2009)

Here are some milestones for completion of a PhD dissertation with me as your advisor. It is important for you to stick to this schedule to have a high-quality dissertation, to contribute valuable research to the community, to obtain feedback on your work from lots of smart reviewers, and to be as competitive as possible for the job you want upon graduation.

Years 3 can overlap with any of the years below if you plan to graduate in four years. Those pursuing an academic career need to think in terms of 5-6 years so that you can get as many strong publications as possible.

Year	Activities
Year 1	If you are considering me as your advisor, we need to work together in some capacity. This may be because you are a student in a class I teach, or we have an independent study project that we work on together. At the end of this we can mutually decide whether or not we feel we can have a productive research relationship. I will not sign any plan of work to be your advisor before the completion of this activity. Fill your schedule with courses*. Take at least two of your four core courses in the first year, including CSC510, and at least one statistics course. This is a good time to take independent study with me if you are not taking a class from me. If you want to pursue an academic career, your first and second years are good for being a TA so you can get teaching experience before needing to really focus on your research. You could also consider teaching a course over the summer. It's a good idea to have an industry internship during your first and second summers to get experience in industry before needing to really focus on your research.
Year 2	Fill your schedule with courses*. Take the remaining two of your four core courses; finish your statistics courses for your statistics minor. Take 3 credits of CSC690/CSC890 in the fall semester and 3 credits of CSC690/CSC890 in the spring semester. Your CSC/690CSC890 research should focus on an early study of the area you would like to research for your dissertation or on research you are doing for your RA assignment. Plan your CSC690/CSC890 research to complete early enough such that you can submit it to a conference during the spring semester. Submit your CSC690/CSC890 research to any of the following conferences: Agile, ASE, CCS, ESEM, FSE, ICSM, ISSRE, ISSTA, OOPSLA, RE or other jointly-agreed substitute. Of these, ASE, CCS, FSE, ISSTA, OOPSLA, RE have very competitive acceptance rates, so the others may be a better choice for your first paper: Agile, ESEM, ICSM, ISSRE. Not to worry if the paper is not accepted :-). You will be learning about what is expected from the community in terms of reseach rigor, salience/novelty of topic, and writing. Plan to submit a paper to one of the following conferences based upon your work from spring paper time through the summer, could be on your summer internship if you have one: ICST, ICSE or WWW. Note that ICSE is very competitive so you may consider ICST (or its short paper track) or WWW for this paper. If you want to pursue an academic career, your first and second years are good for being a TA so you can get teaching experience before needing to focus only on your research. You could also consider teaching a course over the summer. It's a good idea to have an industry internship during your first and second summers to get experience in industry before needing to really focus on your research.
Year 3:	Submit papers according to the following schedule: Early fall: Submit your paper to ICST, ICSE, or WWW per plan above. Fall semester: Submit a systematic literature review on your general research topic to the Information and Software Technology (IST) journal. Spring semester: Submit to any ONE (quality over quantity!) of the following conferences: Agile (Chicago, papers due 2/13), ASE (Auckland, NZ; abstract due 5/4), CCS (usually Alexandria, VA, due April 20), ESEM (Lake Buena Vista, due 3/1), FSE (Amsterdam, due 3/16), ICSM (Edmonton, abstract due 3/27), ISSRE (Bangalore, due April?), ISSTA (Chicago, due Jan 30), or OOPSLA (Orlando, due March?). During the spring semester, there are also opportunities to write papers for ICSE workshops and/or a Fast Abstract for ISSRE to get (additional) feedback on your work and to get yourself out there talking to people in your community. Spring/Summer: Plan to submit a paper to one of the following conferences based upon your work from spring paper time through the summer, could be on your summer internship if you have one: ICST, ICSE, or WWW. It is wise to strategize to hold your very best work out for submission to ICSE rather than submit to a conference in last spring. This plan has you writing three papers/year, four months/paper**. You should be able to write really strong papers if you focus on writing three really great papers/year. Some of these may be revisions of previously-submitted papers if they had not been accepted earlier. Plan your year such that you have these three breakpoints with something to report and get feedback on. In Year 3 or 4 (but at least one year before your graduate), submit to a doctoral symposium at a relevant conference, such as ICSE, ICST, FSE, ASE or ESEM. Through this submission (and hopeful participation) you will obtain valuable feedback on your research idea from respected researchers.
Year 4 thru (Graduation - 1) year	Same as above except you should write for ICSE and the Fall journal paper should be to TSE, TOSEM, JSS, IST, or EMSE. One year you should write a paper for IEEE Computer, IEEE Sofware or IEEE Security and Privacy as a means to get your research out beyond the academic audience of most conferences.
Graduation - 1 year	1.  Write your proposal document. Your research plans must include industrial and/or open source validation of your work. 2. Hold your proposal defense at least one calendar year prior to expecting to graduate. 3. Same publicaiton requirements as above except you should focus on publishing in the most competitive conferences (ICSE, ASE, CCS, FSE, ISSTA, OOPSLA, RE) and journals (TSE, TOSEM). 4. Finish all data gathering analysis before your final semester! 5. Plan your job search. You will need to apply for academic positions by December of the year before your graduation. It is a good idea to get your applications in for industry positions at the same time. I will be happy to brainstorm where to apply with you, and of course to write letters of recommendation for you. We will practice you job talk in reading group.
Graduation semester	1. Write your dissertation. We can work on it in bits and pieces throughout the semester. However, you must give it to me in its entirety a minimum of 3 weeks before your defense date. That allows us two weeks for finalizing the whole document prior to giving it to your committee. You committee will take the final week to read it. 2. Defend your dissertation. 3. Revise your dissertation and obtain approval from the thesis editor.

* To be my student, you must include Software Engineering (CSC510) in your core courses, and take Software Testing and Reliability (CSC712) and Software Security (CSC591). If you have already taken Software Engineering, you must take a course that has CSC510 as a prerequisite. You must also take at least three statistics class to prepare you for the validation efforts of your research (STAT 511, STAT 512, and STAT 711). Having an adequate statistical background is essential for the types of model development we do and for the validation of our work.

** A continual stream of submissions is essential for obtaining external feedback on your ideas and to copyright the progess of your research. Of course you would love to get all your papers accepted, but please realize that periodic paper rejection is generally inevitable. You are learning and getting feedback on your work regardless of whether the paper is accepted or rejected.