All Frankfurt School MBA students have to complete a Master’s Thesis at the end of the programme and I would like to share my experience with you. Interestingly, sometimes trying something new, being persistent and following your ideas as well as giving up an idea can be the correct way to go when finding your project.
The Part-time MBA at Frankfurt School offers three different options to write the Master’s Thesis: You can decide between writing about a scientific research project, working on a consulting project on your own or in a team, or developing an entrepreneurial business plan for a start-up.
Since I have already written a scientific paper for my Bachelor’s and conducted quite a few consulting projects, I decided to try something new and go for the “group work option”. Although I wondered whether this decision could contribute to my Master Thesis and whether it was right to trust in the work of others, I believe it is very similar to what we all experience in our work lives. Oftentimes, our job depends on the job of others and it is the co-working situation that I actually enjoy in my daily work since I truly believe there is something to learn from everyone. Consequently, I started looking for co-workers to write the master’s thesis in a group.
Luckily, I found Anas and Alexander to work on an exciting topic together in cooperation with WIBank – Robotic Process Automation (RPA). They both shared with me their own challenges when choosing between the master’s thesis options.
Anas’ biggest challenge was finding an interesting topic that matches his future career aspirations. Yet he had the clear vision to conduct a consulting project about digitalization in the banking industry and had chosen his electives accordingly. During a job interview, he met our supervisor and found the thesis topic by asking whether there was a potential master’s thesis project about digital strategy at WIBank – a company in Helaba Group. Anas then had a topic that he was passionate about, but the scope was far too large for one person. Therefore, he started looking for team members who would share his enthusiasm for this topic.
From Alexander’s perspective, it was yet another story. When Anas approached him and asked whether he would like to join his project, Alexander rejected this offer since he was eager to write an entrepreneurial business plan on his idea of a platform for financial products. His struggle was quite similar to Anas’ since he also had to find a team that supported his idea and would be willing to invest their time and work in building up this business. Nevertheless, Anas wanted his project to benefit from Alexander’s experience in the banking industry and thus tirelessly advertised it to Alexander. Finally, he convinced Alexander to join his project and give up on his original plan due to scoping issues.
As a team of three, we ended up working on an interesting process optimization and automation project analyzing WIBank’s processes and investigating ways to implement RPA bots into the bank’s back-office functions. Although we all had different challenges to overcome before working on this project and writing our thesis, this only shows that it is a very individual decision-making process anyone has to go through at the end of the studies. Retrospectively I could not have asked for a more interesting topic nor a better team and can say that the decision I took to work in a team on a consulting project was the correct decision for me.
Anas Darkoushy and Alexander Graf also co-authored this blog post and shared their personal insights.
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