My point about the "Business plan" is
1: That it gives you an idea of how much fundraising/money the team needs to make to be able to go to competition/robot and other expenses.
2: If you put the work into it why wouldn't you take a page of the notebook to put it in (not put it all throughout to confuse people).
3: if you are doing a project by your self or with a small group, and you have say $1,000 dollars. You start building and part way through you find it costs way more then you expected (like $25,000 for everything), well the project is half build and you are out of money. It becomes to late that you can't make enough by the dead line and your project just sits and collects dust (and you are out $1000). That's just an example, all I am saying it is helpful to do it. Every time I go on the highway I see a half built building that has been there for 20 or so years. The person started building and ran out of money so there it stands (just an example I see a lot).
4: For projects i'm getting into the habit of doing that just because I don't want to start and not be able to finish, I see the point that in collage they wont really care but if I am doing a project just for fun its a good habit to get into. Just a note, this is a very, very small part of what our team does and its mostly because we created what we call "the SuGO project" (
www.sugobot.com) which is "Sumo Lego robots", the website will give more info. Since we are selling the kits and parts we use it.
BOTTOM LINE: Making the "Business plan" is a small part of our team to give us a better view of how much fundraising we need to do. We put it in the "Engineering notebook". It earns us no special award in the competition but is a good experience for the team members. If you wish to discuss this further please feel free to message me but don't just post on this thread because its about giving ideas of how to make a better engineering notebook, save the comments for a message, not a thread, Thanks.
Feel free to message me, I would be happy to answer questions/discuss FTC or what my/your team does. ~Derrick