[bduddy]

By far the most surefire way is to declare that "We've finally finished the build early!" At that point, it is almost guaranteed that the robot will suffer a total existence failure, or worse, during your most important match.

Of course, and more seriously, a lack of testing is almost a more-guaranteed killer (why is it that everything that gets tested already works and everything that doesn't get tested doesn't work?). I think this is what let my team down this year...