Season Evaluation Time!

[Chris Fultz]

As the 2012 'season' closes, this is a great time for teams to look back on the year and capture material that can help you be a better team in 2013.
Do this soon, before the seniors are gone and the team knowledge disappears.

A good review will cover all team aspects, including the robot, team structure, performance at events, budget, awards, outreach, etc.

This can be done on a white board, poster paper, laptop and projector, whatever works best. The key is for everyone to work together to capture this.

It is important for everyone to be open to comments, but at the same time not attack other people. Also, don't try to solve the issues, just list them first.

A sample "agenda" -

1. What did we do well?
What are things you did a good job at, and want to be sure you repeat. Were there certain areas of the team that did very well? Capture this.

2. What did we do not so well?
What areas need improvement? Where did you struggle? What things are you not very proud of? Capture this.

3. What do we never want to do again?
Are there some things that you need to be sure you never repeat? Some very poor decision that needs to be captured?

4. After you have made a long list, then go back and review the items and see which ones are most important and mark them someway.

5. NOW, decide what you are going to do with the information.

A. Archive it and review it when the team meets again.
B. Create plans and activities to to address some of the items.

If you choose A, make sure the information is somewhere that the team can get to it when it restarts in the fall or before kick-off.
If you choose B, then you will need to prioritize the plans and activities and work on the most critical or most beneficial ones.

This paper is several years old but the principles are valid for putting together plans to address improvement opportunities:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1595

[nlknauss]

Thank you for this post Chris. I was honestly thinking about creating a similar post last week to ask everyone about their practices for reviewing their season.

We've traditionally taken a similar approach where I use a GoogleDoc Form to collect information from students on the team and review it in person with them. The GoogleDoc gives me the ability to collect written feedback from the students and save it from year to year so that we have a collection of data.

The other approach we taken with our FTC program is to create posters which we put up in our work space. The posters use pictures and words to communicate to future members the lessons learned. Posters are cool because they act as a constant reminder of the the team's goals and experiences.

[akoscielski3]

We already started on some stuff. But we are planning on reviewing the Design Process and Build more. Like what we should have done to make our robot better or how we should change the process to making our robot that much better. Though this was our best season ever, I know there is a ton of stuff we can improve on. And there always is more stuff any team can do to get better next year.

Thanks for the tips Chris

[Boe]

My team makes a "Lessons Learned" list every year, so after the season we went through the 2011 one to see if we corrected issues from last year, and then went through this years to brainstorm what we could do better

[Debbie]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

As the 2012 'season' closes, this is a great time for teams to look back on the year and capture material that can help you be a better team in 2013.
:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1595

Thanks Chris! We do something similar, but it is great to read other options!