I am currently waiting for a meeting with my master's thesis supervisor and two people from a research institution i am associated with. The plan is to for me to talk about my literature review, and suggest possible directions for my thesis.
In a previous meeting with my supervisor only, we have already decided on a topic, but the method or framework are subject to the outcome of the next meeting. Since the research institution has a closely related industry project, it is to be expected that the decision process will be in some way influenced by the applicability to the project. To some people, this might be a limitation, but I would be glad to see parts of my work actually being useful.
I have prepared slides to give an overview of my literature search, along with suggestions on what to do next. Because I have not been too busy with other stuff, I have also implemented some methods already. In addition, I am currently working on deriving the extension of another method to our specific problem, which may or may not work. While it could be nice to have this kind of progression, I'm not sure whether it is appropriate of me to work in a direction without having checked with my supervisor first. This is especially since we might decide to do something entirely different.
I expect the supervisor to be in favor of methods that are similar to recent publications, and the research institute people to be biased towards methods that fit their project. I think the methods I have been looking at are rather geared towards the latter.
My questions are:
- Should I bring up me working on selected methods in the meeting? This could be interpreted as going against our agreement to decide on a method together.
- Should I update my supervisor on my progress prior to the meeting (via e-mail)?
- Would it be a bad idea to steer the meeting into the direction of the methods I have been working on, without mentioning it?
My concerns are not only having worked on the wrong things in vain, but also upsetting my supervisor for not checking in and not abiding the agreement (at least kind of).
I would rather not embarrass him in front of the other people, in case he would feel that way about me working without having communicated with him.
Additional Information: my relationship to my supervisor is somewhat formal since we haven't had too much contact up until now, but I already know both people from the research institution where I have been a research assistant for over two years.