paper: Killer Bees 2011 Robotics Season Journal

[JVN]

Jim,
Thank you VERY much for sharing. I'm sure the FRC community will benefit greatly from learning more about Team 33 and the process you guys use.

I really enjoyed reading it -- it is interesting to hear your account of facing some of the same challenges I faced as team lead of 148. This is one of the coolest things about these build journals -- I hope everyone who reads these recognizes that we're all going through the same things!

Thanks for answering the challenge...
-John

[Jacob Paikoff]

Thanks for doing this Jim, it was a great read.
Hopefully next year I'll have enough time at the beginning of build season to start a journal.

[Jared Russell]

Read the whole thing. Great, great resource. Thanks Jim!

[landinw]

Fantastic read. Thank you very much for putting this together and sharing it with us.

This is exactly the kind of data we are looking to collect in the Systems Engineering survey we have posted (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=95109) for a graduate class research project we are doing now. Any other teams have similar documents of their experiences they would like to share?

[Dmentor]

I really enjoyed reading your paper; informative and gave a unique insight into your team. Clearly your time management skills are amazing. How do you maintain your focus over such a prolonged duration and how do you deal with burnout?

[topgun]

One point I got out of it was the significant advantage of the bag-n-tag events for your first event. We basically had to shut down testing on ship day at noon to get the robot crated for FedEx pickup. Killer Bees worked until 11:30 P.M. before bagging and tagging.

We could have done a lot of tuning and testing during that last day. (And we needed it)

[Jim Zondag]

Originally Posted by Dmentor

I really enjoyed reading your paper; informative and gave a unique insight into your team. Clearly your time management skills are amazing. How do you maintain your focus over such a prolonged duration and how do you deal with burnout?

Dan,
We have gotten pretty good at the whole time management thing over the years. I am an Automotive Engineer, and I am used to coordinating big projects with lots of players and lots of facets. FRC is very similar, just way faster. I will say that we have learned a lot about process from the good teams. Talking to 111, 217, 469, 1114, 67, 148 and others has really inspired us to get our act together. These teams do great things and you can really learn a lot from them.
Most of my team are not quite as fanatical as I am. Most of our team works in phases, where some do a ton of work in the build season, and some do a bit more in the testing and training phase. Many people rotate days off. I am pretty much there all the time, but I have found ways to deal with this. Efficiency is the key for me. If I have a plan, a design, the tools, and people with the skills, it is amazing what can get done in a short period of time. I run a plan/execute cycle on about a 1 day loop all the way through. We also have the blessing of a fantastic parent support group, so basic needs like food and Mountain Dew just seem to appear as if by magic exactly when we need them.

Jim

[AlecMataloni]

I always wondered where our mentors ran off to after the finals matches...