brainstorming

[GaryVoshol]

Right after kickoff, I wouldn't even worry whether an idea was against the rules or not. Just get all the ideas out there. If something sounds good, you can research later to see if it is legal.

Everyone on the team should be able to make suggestions. If you have a small team, you can do it all in one group. Or you might break up into several groups, so everyone gets a chance to give some ideas.

Write everything down, probably on a whiteboard or flipchart. Rules: ideas only, no evaluating or arguing. Other people can ask questions only to clarify the suggestion.

And JVN's blog gives a great perspective on deciding WHAT to do before you try to figure out HOW to do it: http://blog.iamjvn.com/2011/01/jvn-b...efore-how.html

[GCentola]

First, I think all of the ideas mentioned are great and very helpful during that critical first week.

Our typical week 1 schedule is the following:

Saturday: Read over game rules as a team and then discuss ways to play the game. For this, we usually break up into about groups to discuss different styles of play. These 6 groups then form into 2 alliances and play a human simulation or two just so we have a short visual about what is going on. During this process, it is important to write everything down. Key things to note are: offense/defense types, ways to score etc. We then reconvene to discuss the ideas that groups came up with and strategies may be more effective. This day has NOTHING to do with actual designs. After, everyone goes home and reads through the rules more carefully.

Sunday: The team goes over any rules and clarifications as well as any questions about the rules to ask the GDC. We then start moving into robot strategy. This year included discussions such as floor load vs feeder load or minibot vs no minibot. We have a general idea of what we want our robot to do (but NOT DESIGNS ON HOW) in a broad sense.

Monday: The list is discussed by the strategy team to determine what is realistic and this is where numbers start to appear. Discussions usually include what we want from a drive-base, how many tubes we want to score, how fast our target minibot is (originally, we thought 4 seconds was going to be fast). This list is then shown to the mechanical teams so they can decide how they want to go about achieving this task.

The rest of the week is about the mechanical teams coming up with design ideas and rapid prototyoing to test concepts, while still making sure we are on goal to meet what we originally planned to do.

Hope this helps! If you need any more description, feel free to ask! The link to JVN's blog is also VERY helpful!

[Carol]

MOEmentum has a section on brainstorming - link below. And if you want to get even more detailed, there is an old presentation on MOE's website on project management, based on standard procedures used in corporations.

If you are a rookie or near rookie, you should check out MOEmentum, a weekly guide to the build season. I may be a little biased, but we get a lot of feedback from teams that have found it very useful.

Another good source for brainstorming help is the WPI Thinktank - link also below

http://moe365.org/moementum/moementum1.php

http://moe365.org/moeu/moeu2003projectmanagement.pdf

http://thinktank.wpi.edu/Portal