Here is a one-page check I use with doctoral students. It takes about twenty minutes and often saves a semester of revision.
Draw a table with three columns. Column one lists each research question. Column two lists the data that will answer it. Column three lists the analysis applied to that data. One row per question.
Then read the table for two problems. A row with an empty cell means a question that cannot yet be answered: it has no data, or the data has no planned analysis. A question that appears in no row, or a method that appears in no row, points to a chapter that has not been designed, or to a procedure that exists only because it was inherited.
A few examples of what the table catches. A research question about change over time paired with a single-wave survey. An interview protocol that never maps to any question. A regression listed in the analysis plan with no variable that could serve as the outcome. A second research question added during proposal revisions that never reached the methods chapter.
Add a fourth column if your committee wants it: the chapter and section where each row is reported. It lets you check that every question is eventually answered in the findings, and that no finding appears without a question behind it.
Complete the table before the next draft goes to your committee, and keep it with the draft. When a member asks how a procedure connects to a question, the answer is one row.
This is a practitioner tool, not a validated instrument, and I have not studied its effect on time to completion.
I coach Ed.D. and Ph.D. students in education through the dissertation. Details and pricing: cevallos.org/dissertation-thesis-coaching