Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
Also, having the 6 week deadline directly mirrors how things go for me at work as a software engineer. You spend a lot of time working on a release, with a known target date. You meet that date and package up your "dot-zero" release. Then you turn around and start working on the "dot-one" release, fixing everything you didn't have time to fix within your schedule, or addressing bugs that were found late in the process. There's a lead time between finishing the release and going live, and as a result your under time pressure to finish the "dot-one" release so you go live with that instead of the "dot-zero". Then it goes live and your customers find all sorts of stuff you missed. So you go back and start working on fixing those in a "dot-two" release, again under a time crunch because you don't want to tick off your customers for too long.
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So technically I help lead several hundred software developers. A project with a timeline so short it negatively impacts the people doing the work and produces broken product that no one thinks meets any of the expectations is a project not scoped correctly.
I think the 6 week timeline can be met with significant pressure on the people driving it. I also think what comes out from all of the FRC teams is pretty darn impressive and definitely most people can see it being competition worthy.
So I would propose:
1. We should have a deadline that is a longer by just a few weeks.
A. So that the commitment is not every night and weather has less impact which can be dangerous.
B. The teams that get close have a little more time to get to the destination.
2. There should be more study of what makes new teams successful with an eye towards improving that experience.
I know work tends to grow to fill the time you give it. So realistically there will be people who will waste just as much time with more time. However one can always point out the expansion of the technical problem by people who lack the foresight to see the outcome before hand. I am pointing out the actual level of commitment for this challenge is higher than is required from my teams at a professional level and if at a professional level I worked my employees like this I would loose some of them to jobs that pay just as well, produce just as many results and do it by working smarter.