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Originally Posted by Ian Curtis
Do you actually set up formal requirements or use some kind of DOORS-esque tracking tool? Some FRC robot are definitely complicated enough to warrant it. I have thought that writing up actual requirements on Day 1 and 2 would be a fun exercise, but I am not sure we could stick to them.
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I use DOORs in my job all the time, but never figured on using it with a team. Sure you could, but honestly defining tracking multiple levels of requirements can take a single person or small group weeks upon weeks, and as you mention, things change too fast to really make this a worthwhile tool in a 6 week build. DOORs is all about traceability to the customer requirements, and FIRST is more about defining a strategy - you are your own customer in this case. It may be a fun exercise to do for a summer project... to trace all aspects of a design to the FIRST rules, but Im not convinced there is value in a $6,000 piece of software to track a level or two worth of FIRST Robot requirements.
Its more important for this group to define something like the top 10 requirements for the robot (and even some non requirements). Many teams do this, but fail to stick with it, and that is where they fail. They see something they can add on, or they define requirements that are way out of their means. I would bet if all teams compared what they built in the end to what they said they were going to build at the end of the first weekend, that MAYBE only 10% of them would have achieved their goals, and many would have fallen far short because they ran off on some tangent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ttldomination
To talk about System Engineering in general, some documentation (read: wikipedia) seems to imply that the SE folks are involved in design and managing of complex projects. I suppose the specific role tends to vary from company to company.
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I've now worked at 3 different companies, and every one of them had a different role/view for SE's. I've been everything from a Project Manager/Engineer as an SE, to a Technical Lead, to a Documentation Monkey, to a Requirements Engineer, to a Subject Matter Expert. You will also see SE associated highly with the IT world, but that's not exactly the role I am talking about.
Realistically every team needs a Technical Lead - one who not only understands the integration of the CAD, but what the electrical team can do to drive it, how the programming team needs it to work, and how everything can come together in the end. This Technical Lead can lead an SE team or Integration team or whatever you want to call it to ensure that everything meets the team's initial requirements, that all designs are following along the path of the team's requirements, and that all components are going to work together in the end. The biggest job for the SE team is Keeping the End Goal in mind... always thinking 5 steps ahead of where the design or build is at, and catching any issues before they happen.