The difference between having a plan and not having one is night and day. I hope you can convince your teammates to have enough faith to try it.
In the meantime, your team has only the memory of the most recent build season to go off of. The place to start is to acknowledge your teammates' frustration with having poured their blood and sweat into a robot with disappointing results. But also let them know your team is trying something different based on the experience of very successful FRC teams. Let them know that this year won't be last year. There is a better way with planning if they are willing to give it a chance.
Speaking in general, it's important that everyone, students and mentors, are good team members. This means respecting each other's time and input. It's important to respect the conditions mentors place on their availability since they often are self-supporting and likely supporting families.
Being a good team member also means respecting team rules. That includes the one requiring a mentor to be present while using your workspace. Your team does not need members who pick and choose which rules they want to follow, no matter what other skills they possess. If a member violates a rule, I'd expect your team's handbook would recommend appropriate disciplinary measures. Remember that violating this particular rule might cost the team the privilege of using that workspace, not to mention the terrible possibilities of what could happen if someone were to be injured with no legal adult present. You might want to remind your teammates of this.
Your teammates may feel like it isn't fair to not be able to work when they want and as much as they want but that's the deal, take it or leave it. The mentors don't need to justify themselves for wanting to restrict their time. Their time is already a gift to the team.
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Some tips for build season project management:
For anyone on a team that doesn't currently plan their build season prior to kickoff, please check out 1114's build season. Get your team to start planning now. You might have to make some minor adjustments to accommodate your team's realities:
http://www.simbotics.org/resources/t...t/build-season
When coming up with your build season plan, identify tasks, milestones, and deliverables:
- task: an activity with a goal
- milestone: a major progress point in your plan where you may need to make changes to your plan. For instance, your team might consider final CAD designs to be a milestone.
- deliverable: a document or a component. Examples of a document: a CAD design, a strategy analysis, an electrical layout. Examples of a physical component: a completed mechanism, completed code, a fully assembled robot.
All tasks, milestones, and deliverables should have due dates, with tasks having start dates as well. Each task should also have a student(s) and/or mentor(s) who are responsible for tracking how close the task is to complete.
If you live in a climate where it snows during build, add an estimated number of snow days into your build season plan. Remember to account for holidays if they restrict access to your build space (MLK Day is 1/16, President's Day is 2/20). Consider that weather in other parts of the world can delay part delivery, so anticipate parts may not arrive on time even if they are in stock and you have perfect weather.
Schedule a weekly check-in during build season among subteam heads to compare actual progress to the build plan. It only needs to be about 15 minutes. If your team is slipping behind schedule, you may have to sacrifice one or more portions of your schedule. Be willing to do this! You'll have a much more successful competition with a well constructed robot that has 50% of the mechanisms you wanted than with a poorly constructed robot that has 100% of the mechanisms you wanted.
Try to keep your team's limits in mind during your robot design phase. Design to your team's resources (time, experience, tools, etc.) If your team can manage their workload and time well, you might get through build season with a shred of sanity left for competition.
