[meaubry]

Great topic as this does get to be a difficult balancing act.

This 6 week project is all about deadlines and compromises. Try to be firm with the planned deadlines for major tasks and play it by ear for the lesser ones, as the dependencies quickly determine what can and can't be done.

Do the "must haves' first, then focus on the "nice to haves".

Make the point to the students that if they don't all work together AND to the plan, the robot will NOT get completed with enough time to test that it works (really important to do this before it goes in the box).

I purposely didn't refer to the programming issue because I look at programming the same way as I look at making parts - it ALL has the same deadline and MUST be included in the project planning. There are lots of times I would love to keep working on a mechanism until it was perfect - but if it is not an absolute critical piece, we do the best we can and move on. I suppose knowing how to convince a student to "move on" is what the real problem is in your example.

When deciding to make something "perfect, but late" or "sufficient, and on time" - take sufficient and on time, there is time for improvement later.