[Jon Stratis]

One of the biggest thing's we've done the past few years is to schedule ourselves for a 5 week build season, instead of 6. We haven't hit 5 weeks yet, but we've been close, and as a result that last week doesn't take as big a toll.

You need to go in with a generalized, season long plan. Finish the prototyping and drive train in the first week and have a design set by the end of the week. That's when you come up with your specific schedule to try and get everything finished early.

One of the key tricks is to only take on what you can accomplish. We do a cost/benefit analysis, where cost is mostly complexity/time to implement (we haven't had an issue yet where cost = $ for what we've wanted to do, but that is always something to consider), and you have to be realistic in the amount of time/effort you can put in so you know where to draw the line.