[David Brinza]

A least some form of "top-level" schedule should be put together before the kick-off. Perhaps you break the robot up into subsystems: chassis/drive train, electronics board, prototype manipulators, etc. and plan parallel work effort in these areas. If the chassis/drive gets done early, you can divert those students to the manipulators or some other portion that's lagging. There's also building of field elements, acquiring game pieces, putting the chairman's, Woodie Flower' awards together. Assigning people to these tasks, assessing progress and "redeploying" labor on a weekly basis is project management.

There's also budget to be managed - cost of spare parts, materials, tools, t-shirts, give-aways, travel,... Establishing the team's budget and making sure one or more of the cost elements isn't getting out of hand is important. That's part of project management too.

The SCRRF workshops held at CSUN in early-November had a very good session on project management given by Ian Cannon of Pratt-Whitney (formerly known as Rocketdyne, the builder's of rocket engines). His concluding remark was:

"Fail to plan and you can plan to fail!"

You don't need a super-detailed network schedule to build a robot that is tracked hour-by-hour, but you need something to gauge your progress. Otherwise, you may realize in the last week that you're in big trouble.

BTW at last night's team meeting our students (only 5 were there) were tasked with putting together the week-by-week top-level schedule. They finished it in an hour. It was only a half-page long, but it was adequate for a starting point. Students and mentors agreed it was a worthwhile exercise. Is it realistic and achievable? Perhaps the fact that the students created this will give them a sense of ownership and motivate them to "do what they said"!