Thesis documentation template

A reusable documentation template and issue forms for a master’s thesis managed with GitHub.

This folder holds a documentation template for a master’s thesis. It is a worked example from the workshop “GitHub as a Project Management Tool”.

Important

This template is not a thesis-format template that the University of Bern approved. It does not replace the rules of your study programme, the instructions of your supervisor, or the documents of the Dean’s Office.

Files

File Use it for
thesis-documentation.md The documentation of the thesis project: question, scope, provenance, method, decisions, results, limits, rights, reproducibility, access
decision-record.md One decision: context, decision, consequences, what did not change
issue-forms/epic.yml An issue form for an epic
issue-forms/task.yml An issue form for a task with output, owner, acceptance criteria, evidence, and basis
issue-forms/story.yml An issue form for a user story

How to use it

  1. Create a private repository from the open research data template.
  2. Copy thesis-documentation.md into documentation/ and fill it in step by step. Leave a section empty with the note “not yet decided” instead of guessing.
  3. Copy decision-record.md into project-management/ for each important decision, or keep all decisions in one file project-management/decisions.md.
  4. Copy the three issue forms into .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/. GitHub then offers them under New issue.

Licence

CC BY 4.0. Reuse and adapt it with attribution to the course.

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