Meeting Schedule
 

Hello Chief,

So, I've created this account as to not reveal the identity of my team & myself. I know that these accounts are typically frowned upon but I hope you can look past that for a brief moment.

This is the second year of myself being on my robotics team and I was recently promoted to a leadership position. Every week, the leadership team meets with our mentors for a call to discuss business. One thing that has come up is the question of our meeting schedule. Now, we are not affiliated with a school, and our head mentors have requested that we don't meet every day because that has typically not worked in the past. In addition, they have requested that we don't meet until 11:00 at night.

Our main robot builders recently requested to meet every day which led to an extremely long debate on the subject that got a little heated. On our secret group chat, they were mostly adopting the position of "Screw them, they don't know anything about building robots." Now, as I was listening to the debate, I noticed that the mentors were bringing up valid positions. These revolved around extra commitments as well as finding parents to be there with us. However, the position of the head robot builders remained the same, with the same intensity. Even after the call, they were saying "its easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."

I believe that this position mainly came from the fact that we had to meet every day at the last minute for our fall competition (where we placed last) because we didn't effectively plan. Even though we have created a plan for this FRC Season (that is documented), I still fear that the main robot builders will completely disregard that. In the past, we have advanced to the World Champs (mainly off marketing) despite the fact that we have built the robot completely at the last minute.

Now, I'm all for adopting the position of working smarter not harder, but I don't know how to convince that of my teammates. I feel like I'm in the minority here, but I don't want to risk my position. How can I make sure we don't start the year off on the wrong foot? Any advice would greatly be appreciated, as I want to make sure that we an operate like a real-world company.

Thanks,

Questions for Chief

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

There are some seriously world class teams (notable Einstein appearances) who work only off a few hours a week (like the 10-15 hours range). I can't think of them right now, but I know there's a CD post about them somewhere. My own personal team meets about 25 hours per week, but a lot of that time is non productive. I think if you come into every meeting with a really solid plan and a solid schedule for what you want and need to do, delegate correctly and don't get distracted, I think a lesser schedule can work well.

A lot of this next part depends on what you head mentor's positions are. For us, we have one mentor who comes in three times a week during our "mentor meetings", then one who is the faculty sponsor who is there for school reasons. If yours head mentors are complaining that they don't want to be there every day, mentor specific meetings are a great solution. Mentors come in for two two hour meetings per week then eight hours on Saturday. The mentors still have plenty of influence over what we do, and we'll only go through about 5 hours of work without having a mentor there. Every major decision is done at these meetings.

If your head mentors are teacher sponsors, there's another issue. Because of anonymity, I have no idea if you're a community club, school affiliated or what organization you are in. In this case, try and get more than one faculty sponsor. In your "working harder not smarter", you can figure out which sub teams (or whatever you call them) need to be there at each meeting. Everyone needs to be there for kickoff, but week two? Electrical doesn't need to be there (for most teams, some teams have their entire robot built week two :p).

In dealing with your leadership team, in regards to their comment about "Screw them, they don't know anything about building robots", they are SO very wrong. I don't care who your mentors are and what they do, they are WRONG. Just about any mentor is at least going to have the experience purely on the team of just being on it for longer. Most likely, they also do some sort of STEM job, adding to their experience even if they don't specifically use robotics. Even if they are the most joe-schmo on the street (which I'm not saying they are, all of our mentors are wonderful and brilliant), they have more reasoning skills. Sometimes it's better to have someone who has a fully developed brain (human brains don't develop fully until age 25) to look at something and point out something.

Also, don't try and operate like a "real world company". Sure, real engineering is great, but you have virtually no experience here. You have to build in training and strategy into a even shorter area where an engineering firm doesn't. You shouldn't work like a company, you should work like a FIRST team. There is nothing out there you can compare this to. That's part of the charm. We've built up our own little community with our own standards, our own expectations and our own opinions on everything. You must create just about everything from scratch, so test it out. It seems like previous years haven't turned out well for you in terms of robot performance, so maybe this is the year you change things up.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

I'm curious as to what you mean by the meet until "11:00 at night?" Are you trying to say that you guys start meeting after school (3-4 PM) and go until 11:00 at night? And this happens on a nearly daily basis?

Without a few more details, I can tell you what my experience has been. On my team(s) the most intense build schedule is the following:
- Meeting every weekday (3:30 - 6:30)
- Meeting every Saturday (10 AM - 4 PMish)
- Meeting Sunday as needed
- Students are not required to attend every day

Now, that schedule was good, and even with that basic schedule, people were very burnt out by the end of the week 4-5.

With that being said, I don't quite understand how you guys (as students) plan to proceed without the support of the mentors. I assume they're responsible for the work space, the work tools, order your parts, etc. So you can't just "screw them" and do what you want.

I'd recommend that you guys go back to the drawing board and try and address concerns and find some common ground.

For example, if you guys want to meet every day, and the mentors want to meet 5 days a week, can you guys start at 5 days a week and adjust as the season goes on? You have a calendar and a "plan" so if you start falling behind, you can add more days and hours.

- Sunny G.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

What we've done in the past is that we will say that we will start at 4 and end at 6:30. That turns to 7:30 and eventually to 11:00. We eventually just had that listed on our official calendar.

As for our mentors, we're not allowed to be in the space without one (because of safety). That, we've never had a problem with, but they have to stay with us into the late hours.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

Working from 4-11? That's an insane amount of hours. I've only ever done that a few times late in the season.

How you use your time is much more important than how much of it you have. I suggest focusing your efforts on efficiency at meetings.

And trust me, being a mentor is hard. Make sure your team understands how lucky they are to have people volunteering their free time for your students.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

You are spending an awful lot of time in the shop. Yet you mention last-minute robot building and having poor-to-mixed track record because of it. So, what is everyone doing during all these hours in the shop?

When you break it down, there's logically one of two things happening here:

1. You are building a fairly complex robot that takes many hours to design, fab, put together, test, program, etc. Everyone is working at their hardest and still consuming every available hour.

Options: (a) reduce the complexity of your robot, (b) acknowledge that you really do need a ton of hours to do this and plan them accordingly. Option (c) is get more students involved, but as any project manager knows, this is not as easy. (This is known as the Mythical Man-Month)

2. You're spending a lot of hours in the shop but not using them productively, leading to wasted time and last minute rushing. If you could fix this, you'd spend less wasted time and therefore less time overall, and perhaps achieve something closer to the build schedule your mentors planned. Of course, "if you could fix this" is a lot easier to type than it is to do...

Options: (a) take a more disciplined approach to building, divide the work into discrete chunks, do whatever project planning exercises work for you to be more organized and work more efficiently, or you could always (b) reduce the complexity of your robot.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

I would say the first key is respecting the schedule. If everyone agrees on 4-6:30, then actually get done at 6:30. Your mentors have lived and families, and do need some time away from the team. But as a mentor, it's hard to leave when you have students there that want to keep working. It's up to the team leadership to manage that!. They need to keep an eye on the clock, call for the team to clean up at an appropriate time. It also helps if you have some sort of final wrap up each night to mark the end of the meeting. It gets everyone away from the tools and ready to go home.

There's nothing wrong with meeting every day for a couple of hours. My team meets 2 hours a day 4 days a week plus 7 hours on Saturdays - a total of 15 hours per week. And you know, we stick to that schedule. We may schedule more time near the end of the build season if needed, but it is scheduled in advance, not just meetings that gradually lengthen.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

I know that many teams have pretty ridiculous hours, but understanding that fact...

...4-11 is ridiculous. 4-11 every day is insane. And there's no way that, when the meeting is from 4-11, you guys spend the entire time focused and working on the machine.

Find a compromise, plan better, learn to work in reasonable constraints.
- Sunny G.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

You're not the only one asking questions about schedule...
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...light=schedule
particularly https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...3&postcount=55

One thing to remind the other student leaders (and, if I were you, I'd privately remind the mentors): Mentors are volunteers, and don't have to be there. So if they decide to stick to the requested schedule and leave the shop at 7, the team's gotta scoot!


That being said, you don't have to do all your work in the shop. So, here's a proposal:
Work at the shop until 7 (or other agreed-upon time--it'll likely be later as build progresses). After that time, if work can be done outside the shop, take it home and work on it from home. (CAD, programming, planning the next day's work, ordering parts, and "hey, who's bringing dinner tomorrow?" can all be handled remotely with a little bit of setup. Just as an example.)

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

As a student team leader, you need to tell these members that their approach to this is wrong and detrimental to the team. As a mentor, I would walk if my team did this to me. Can your team afford to lose these mentors? It is totally insulting to the efforts and sacrifices that your mentors are giving you and your team. Your members sound greedy and callous to the the needs and obligations of the mentors.

We have jobs (sometimes two jobs), families, and sometimes hobbies outside of FRC. Giving 20 hours a week is a big sacrifice for us and our spouses. If I understand you correctly, your team wants 45 - 50 hours per week.

Mentors want our teams to field a successful bots. I take pride in this team and I want them to be proud of their work. I suggest you look at your strategy at the beginning of build season. Break down the points and focus on mastering the easiest way to score. If you try to do everything, you may end up doing everything....poorly. This is true in FRC and in life.

I will now put on my manager hat and give you some leadership advice - overtime hours are generally not productive. It is easy to burn out, get lost in the weeds, and lose focus when you are putting in such long hours. You have to schedule breaks and respect the schedule. Take a day off and tell your members to work individually if necessary. Studying the rule book, looking at Robot in 3 day videos, scanning CD threads, scanning robot part vendor sites are all very beneficial activities but don't require a team meeting. Coming to build with a clear head is important. Long hours does not equal quality hours.

In parting - we work 3 nights a week 6-9 and Saturdays for 6-9 hours during build season. We reserve Sundays for when emergencies pop up but we generally try to work 20 hours per week. Members work independently and come to meetings with ideas and ready to get to work.

Good luck.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

I'll +1 this. Being able to accomplish significant tasks outside of team meetings helps keep in-person meetings efficient and productive. It's a difficult skill to learn but totally worth it!

-Mike

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

It's important as a team leader to make sure the other students understand that they need to compromise. Beyond that, what our team does during build season is we never meet Sundays (partly because of the school), but, more importantly, we avoid Fridays as well to avoid burnout and keep people rested.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

Dialing back build hours, scoping the robot design to our capabilities, and planning efficiently has lead to improved success for my team in recent years. Speaking as a former student and current head coach: learning to work efficiently is the key to being a successful and sustaining FRC team.

It is important that the students and mentors come to an understanding about the desired level of build effort. To be clear: I said understanding, not agreement. Remember that the mentors are the people who will be with the team year after year ensuring its continuation and sustainability. Their commitment is critical in maintaining a team.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

The difference between having a plan and not having one is night and day. I hope you can convince your teammates to have enough faith to try it.

In the meantime, your team has only the memory of the most recent build season to go off of. The place to start is to acknowledge your teammates' frustration with having poured their blood and sweat into a robot with disappointing results. But also let them know your team is trying something different based on the experience of very successful FRC teams. Let them know that this year won't be last year. There is a better way with planning if they are willing to give it a chance.

Speaking in general, it's important that everyone, students and mentors, are good team members. This means respecting each other's time and input. It's important to respect the conditions mentors place on their availability since they often are self-supporting and likely supporting families.

Being a good team member also means respecting team rules. That includes the one requiring a mentor to be present while using your workspace. Your team does not need members who pick and choose which rules they want to follow, no matter what other skills they possess. If a member violates a rule, I'd expect your team's handbook would recommend appropriate disciplinary measures. Remember that violating this particular rule might cost the team the privilege of using that workspace, not to mention the terrible possibilities of what could happen if someone were to be injured with no legal adult present. You might want to remind your teammates of this.

Your teammates may feel like it isn't fair to not be able to work when they want and as much as they want but that's the deal, take it or leave it. The mentors don't need to justify themselves for wanting to restrict their time. Their time is already a gift to the team.

----

Some tips for build season project management:

For anyone on a team that doesn't currently plan their build season prior to kickoff, please check out 1114's build season. Get your team to start planning now. You might have to make some minor adjustments to accommodate your team's realities:
http://www.simbotics.org/resources/t...t/build-season

When coming up with your build season plan, identify tasks, milestones, and deliverables:

• task: an activity with a goal
• milestone: a major progress point in your plan where you may need to make changes to your plan. For instance, your team might consider final CAD designs to be a milestone.
• deliverable: a document or a component. Examples of a document: a CAD design, a strategy analysis, an electrical layout. Examples of a physical component: a completed mechanism, completed code, a fully assembled robot.

All tasks, milestones, and deliverables should have due dates, with tasks having start dates as well. Each task should also have a student(s) and/or mentor(s) who are responsible for tracking how close the task is to complete.

If you live in a climate where it snows during build, add an estimated number of snow days into your build season plan. Remember to account for holidays if they restrict access to your build space (MLK Day is 1/16, President's Day is 2/20). Consider that weather in other parts of the world can delay part delivery, so anticipate parts may not arrive on time even if they are in stock and you have perfect weather.

Schedule a weekly check-in during build season among subteam heads to compare actual progress to the build plan. It only needs to be about 15 minutes. If your team is slipping behind schedule, you may have to sacrifice one or more portions of your schedule. Be willing to do this! You'll have a much more successful competition with a well constructed robot that has 50% of the mechanisms you wanted than with a poorly constructed robot that has 100% of the mechanisms you wanted.

Try to keep your team's limits in mind during your robot design phase. Design to your team's resources (time, experience, tools, etc.) If your team can manage their workload and time well, you might get through build season with a shred of sanity left for competition. :)

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

If your team is really meeting 4-11 that often, then you are doing yourselves more harm than good.

Re: Meeting Schedule
 

I remember a few years ago Dean Kamen giving everyone a "friendly reminder" that it really is NOT about the robot. The goal of FIRST is for mentors to lead high school students into STEM programs at colleges/universities.

I suggest Step One is getting the mentors and students on same sheet of music with some 2-way respect for each other.

As for the schedule that should be an open discussion where the two main questions are: When are you available? How many hours a week can you commit?

As a mentor/student I might be available 5 of 7 days a week but only willing to commit to three days a week.

You posted a good question!