[gblake]

Originally Posted by team F.T.C 4240

My point about the "Business plan" is

...

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

Derrick,

I am giving you and all other readers my opinions about how to create better Engineering Notebooks.

I am occasionally a judge for robotics competitions. For that reason I like to give teams my perspective and the reasoning behind it. I just reread the FTC Game Manual rules about creating and judging Engineering Notebooks. What I read reinforced that my judging approach is correct for FTC's Think Award.

As a judge, I would not consciously penalize a team for putting a moderate amount of extra material in their Engineering notebook, so long as I could still find the evidence that the notebook was truly an engineering tool (not just a diary); but every piece of superfluous information would distract me as I tried to find the pertinent information, and would (subconsciously at least) make any engineering information omissions more troubling.

1st Bottom Line: From a Think Award standpoint, you make a better engineering notebook by better satisfying the requirements outlined in the Game Manual.

2nd Bottom Line: I agree that every FTC project plan should include a budget, and a few other items.

Blake