Abstract
The economic, political and personal imperatives of the times emphasise not only successful achievement of the doctorate with generic skills learning along the way, but also require timely completion of projects with discernable impact. This paper develops that theme by considering the views of some experienced supervisors and supervisor trainers, skills training professionals and writers in the field of doctoral education, as well as doctoral researchers themselves. In a conference activity session they explored those practices and processes that inhibit timely completion and achievement of impact and those that support and encourage those outcomes. This took the form of an iterative refining process working on responses provided by a similarly representative group in a preceding large UKCGE workshop. After some discussion of the cumulative results, conclusions are tentatively presented for further research.