How this project actually happened
The project changed shape twice before it settled. Knowing that story matters, because it explains why some documents say different things.
Your project changed direction twice. There are older documents floating around that describe a different study with a different title and different variables.
If an examiner has read an early version, they may ask about it. You need to know what changed and be able to say why, calmly, as a decision rather than as a mistake.
The timeline
- December 2025, the first version The original presentation was about a resilient multi-stakeholder event coordination framework for live events in developing regions. It had four independent variables, one of which was buffering mechanisms for network failure. It covered vendors, crowd safety and large events. It was broad, and much of it was hard to test with a survey and a student-sized prototype.
- June 2026, narrowed and approved The topic was cut down to hotel-hosted social events. The words "resilient", "crowd awareness" and "multi-stakeholder" were dropped from the title. Buffering mechanisms disappeared as a variable. Three independent variables remained and the outcome was named Coordination Effectiveness. The supervisor approved the new direction.
- 29 June 2026, Interim Submission 01 Chapters 1 to 3 handed in. At this point the title still said "in Mirissa and Matara".
- June 2026, the first surveys were rejected The supervisor rejected the first draft questionnaires. Two reasons: they looked machine-written, and they had no free-text questions at all. They were rewritten. Plainer wording, the variable labels hidden from respondents so people could not guess what was being measured, and two open questions added to each survey. That rejection is the reason your Chapter 4 has a thematic analysis. It turned out to be one of the strongest parts of the thesis.
- 3 July to 2 September 2026, data collection Two Google Forms. The target was 350 travellers and 50 organisers. What actually came in was 64 and 40.
- 20 August 2026, Interim Submission 02, and the scope widened The title changed from "in Mirissa and Matara" to "in Sri Lanka". The study is now national in scope, with the Southern Province coastal belt, and specifically Mirissa and Matara, acting as the primary case setting inside that national scope. This is the version that counts. Anywhere an older document says something different, Interim 02 wins.
- Early September 2026, the system was built EVENTIA was built, deployed, filled with realistic data and tested. Testing found 7 genuine bugs, which were fixed and then written into the thesis rather than quietly removed.
- 11 September 2026, final thesis submitted 165 pages, 7 chapters, 5 appendices, 40 references.
What changed, and how to explain it
| Was | Became | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Resilient multi-stakeholder event coordination framework | Smart Tourism Event Management System | The first version tried to cover too much. A study has to be narrow enough that one person can actually test it. |
| Live events in developing regions generally | Hotel-hosted social events in Sri Lanka | A specific, reachable population that you could actually survey and observe. |
| Four independent variables, including buffering mechanisms | Three independent variables | Buffering for network failure could not be meaningfully tested by asking people questions on a form. Dropping it made the remaining three testable. |
| Vendors, crowd safety, large events | One hotel, its guests, and its own inventory | The coordination failure at a hotel beach party is a different and more tractable problem than crowd safety at a stadium. |
| Title ending "in Mirissa and Matara" | Title ending "in Sri Lanka" | The coordination problem is national. Mirissa and Matara is where the data was collected, not the limit of the claim. |
Someone will ask: "Why did you only study Mirissa and Matara?"
The answer is that you did not. The scope is national. The target population is hotels, guesthouses and villas across Sri Lanka. Data collection was concentrated in the Southern Province coastal belt for three stated reasons:
One, it has one of the densest concentrations of registered small and medium coastal accommodation in the country. Two, the frequency of hotel-hosted social events there is high enough to actually find organisers who face the problem regularly. Three, published research on hospitality operations in the deep south documents an operational profile that matches small and medium operators nationally, which is what supports generalising from that setting to the country.
Which document is the real one
| Document | Status |
|---|---|
| Final Thesis, 11 September 2026 | The one that counts Everything |
| Interim Submission 02, 20 August 2026 | Canonical for Chapters 1 to 3 wording and the national scope |
| Interim Submission 01, 29 June 2026 | Superseded Still says Mirissa and Matara in the title |
| December 2025 presentation | Historic A different study. Only useful for explaining the pivot |
The things that could have gone better
These are not secrets. They are all written into Chapter 7 of your thesis under "Problems Encountered". Saying them plainly is far better than being caught out.
The sample came in short
104 responses against a planned 400. The organiser half held up. The traveller half is the genuine shortfall, and it is also demographically narrow.
Both trick questions failed
The two deliberately reversed questions behaved backwards in both samples. There is a published explanation for this and the standard fix was applied.
The build window was tight
The system was finished close to the deadline, which is why the usability study with real participants never happened.
The outcome is intention, not result
Because the system did not exist when the survey ran, nobody could report a real improvement. So it measures what people believe would help.
The project started in December 2025 as a much broader study about resilient coordination for live events in developing regions, with four variables including network buffering. It was narrowed in June 2026 to hotel-hosted social events with three testable variables, and my supervisor approved that direction. In August the scope was formalised as national, with the Southern Province coastal belt as the primary case setting, because the coordination problem is not confined to one district. Interim Submission 02 carries that wording and the final thesis follows it.