Do a partial makeover. This is the most common strategy, essentially to extract and build on one or more elements of the thesis, with any leftover material being reworked into articles or used to form the basis of subsequent research. The virtue of this approach is that you build on a strong base of coherent material; the downside is that reworked text is unlikely to be as good as text written from scratch for its particular purpose. Rewrite from scratch. The most radical solution - to completely rewrite your material from the ground up - normally gives vastly superior results, but many junior scholars lack the time and mental energy to carry such a huge task through to its conclusion.