The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by simplyTired

I realize that its a choice a team has to make, but it creates a situation where a team somewhat has to choose between burning their mentors out and having a chance at winning or taking breaks and settling for a sub-average robot.

This is a choice already being made by every single team. Removing the 'stop build date' doesn't change the fact that a choice still needs to be made by everyone's own team on how much time should be committed to the build.

Teams that do not build practice robots or use the withholding allowance are already choosing not to work past the deadline. Granted, some of these choices are made for financial reasons, others are made for 'burnout' reasons and I'm sure there are plenty more reasons teams do or do not do it.

The fact remains that this choice is actively happening every single season.

-Brando

[Bongle]

The fact remains that this choice is actively happening every single season.

But with a longer season, the consequences of choosing the less burnout-inducing option become much more harmful. A team choosing to not withhold right now has their competitors working on a 30lb subset of their robot (or having to build a practice robot, then work on that). The still-working competitors get a boost relatively, but not an insurmountable one.

A team choosing to stop at 6 weeks (or to only do 6 team-weeks of work) in an open build season has its competitors working on their entire robot without restriction. That's a much bigger opportunity cost for choosing to avoid burnout, and so it is a stronger pressure to continue working.

[IKE]

I would argue that you need a "Stop Build Day" for a reason slightly different han what most are calling for. I have been involved in a lot of project related actitivites, and a lot of project related teams. Almost to a rule, there is a "last minute push" on the projects to meet deadlines. Sometimes the project is small, and the last minute push is a long day of effort. Sometimes an all-nighter. Sometimes a hard week. Sometimes a long tiring month.
Currently Build season is a 6 week push, and at the end of 6 weeks, msot teams have a fairly reasonable prototype that generally has some functionality. Giving them additional access points and time will imrpove the quality useability of that prototype, to an extent. If the access is too universal, and if the access is too open, then there will be a shift towards teams "changing the due date". While many argue this would be better, I actually think for a large portion of teams, this would be significantly worse.

There is a ton of proof in FRC that going to additional events and having more time post "stop build" will improve virtually every teams competitive performance. Many will argue (and have excellent proof) that more is better. I agree, but to an extent. My argument that the more is only better because you are leveraging a "stop build" to ensure a certain level of completion at that particluar date. While many would improve from an open season, I actually think an even larger chunk would do wo0rse at their first event. My proof of this are a lot of other design/build competitions that do not have such deadlines that just don't get done in time for the first event. I see this in OCCRRA, I see it in Vex. I see it at work. I saw it in solarcar. I saw it (and still do) in FSAE*. I think have an initial hard deadline, with some limited time afterwards actually improves the overall quality of submission and competition. I would like to see some improvements to the B&T system however.

I would personally keep the deadline as is, and do a "hands off week". Hug you family, feed the dog, ... hands off the robot in the bag. If you make a practice bot, go crazy, but for everyone else, get some rest.

I would then allow for 6 hours each week of unbag time weeks 1-7. This time can be used for practice, test and tune, fix what got broekn in the finals at the last event.. Whatever you choose. It is just that the robot can only be out of the bag 6 hours (or 4 or 78 or 12 or...), and no blocks shorter than 1 hour. FiM uses 2 hours, and it is a bit of a pain. 1 hour minimum would be more flexible and allow for practice.

In short, keep the "Stop Build", but allow for more test and tune windows. Test and tune windows should make it very hard to decide whether or not to do a practice bot. I personally believe 6 hours each week would be right around the level necessary to make it a hard decision.



*Less than 41/104 finsihed the endurance event. 15 did not compete in any of the dynamic events. There have been years with a much lower completion rate than those listed above.

[BrendanB]

How do you think open season would effect the competition season? Would we see an increase in teams scrambling for week 4-6 events? How do you think week 1 would change? Would we see more copy cats? Do you think we might have teams hold out on really building their robots until the elite teams come out to play? I think back on 469 in 2010 and how many of us wished we could redesign our robot in an open build season you can. Would this play a role in how elite teams build and compete with their machines to come out late and not show all of their cards to avoid copies?

These are just some of the questions I see swirling around in the scenarios that play out if an open build season started. To a degree we do have clones like the minibots and ramp style deployment that swept 2011 but the minibots did have an open season policy on them and the witholding allowed for the cloning of the effective device. I would hate to see this spread to entire robots.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by IKE

I would argue that you need a "Stop Build Day" for a reason slightly different han what most are calling for. I have been involved in a lot of project related actitivites, and a lot of project related teams. Almost to a rule, there is a "last minute push" on the projects to meet deadlines. Sometimes the project is small, and the last minute push is a long day of effort. Sometimes an all-nighter. Sometimes a hard week. Sometimes a long tiring month.
Currently Build season is a 6 week push, and at the end of 6 weeks, msot teams have a fairly reasonable prototype that generally has some functionality. Giving them additional access points and time will imrpove the quality useability of that prototype, to an extent. If the access is too universal, and if the access is too open, then there will be a shift towards teams "changing the due date". While many argue this would be better, I actually think for a large portion of teams, this would be significantly worse.

There is a ton of proof in FRC that going to additional events and having more time post "stop build" will improve virtually every teams competitive performance. Many will argue (and have excellent proof) that more is better. I agree, but to an extent. My argument that the more is only better because you are leveraging a "stop build" to ensure a certain level of completion at that particluar date. While many would improve from an open season, I actually think an even larger chunk would do wo0rse at their first event. My proof of this are a lot of other design/build competitions that do not have such deadlines that just don't get done in time for the first event. I see this in OCCRRA, I see it in Vex. I see it at work. I saw it in solarcar. I saw it (and still do) in FSAE*. I think have an initial hard deadline, with some limited time afterwards actually improves the overall quality of submission and competition. I would like to see some improvements to the B&T system however.

I would personally keep the deadline as is, and do a "hands off week". Hug you family, feed the dog, ... hands off the robot in the bag. If you make a practice bot, go crazy, but for everyone else, get some rest.

I would then allow for 6 hours each week of unbag time weeks 1-7. This time can be used for practice, test and tune, fix what got broekn in the finals at the last event.. Whatever you choose. It is just that the robot can only be out of the bag 6 hours (or 4 or 78 or 12 or...), and no blocks shorter than 1 hour. FiM uses 2 hours, and it is a bit of a pain. 1 hour minimum would be more flexible and allow for practice.

In short, keep the "Stop Build", but allow for more test and tune windows. Test and tune windows should make it very hard to decide whether or not to do a practice bot. I personally believe 6 hours each week would be right around the level necessary to make it a hard decision.



*Less than 41/104 finsihed the endurance event. 15 did not compete in any of the dynamic events. There have been years with a much lower completion rate than those listed above.

You put this far better than I ever could. Changing the build season length will just "change the due date." I really like the unbag period idea, it lets people take a step back, breathe a bit, and then improve. The problem isn't that teams don't have enough time, it's that they usually finish the robot on the last day and have no time to iterate when their design goes south, as it enviably always does.

[omgnocomms]

Adding cannon fodder without a direction...

http://web.archive.org/web/200009191...p/minutes.html

There is a section titled "Stress/Burnout" - all from around 15 years ago. All in all, this document is actually an interesting read.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

This may sound like a stupid question, but I'd like some serious responses.

What about shortening the build season to 4 or 5 weeks, with no witholding?

I don't think I would enjoy that at all.

It would probably be an insane sprint to the finish line with little room for errors, setbacks, iteration and prototyping, weather delays, or non Next Day Air shipping. It would probably involve the same amount of man hours of work, just compressed into the shorter time frame, thus ending up with more all-nighters, which would thus cause more physical health issues and burnout.

You'd be pretty much forced to randomly take a shot in the dark as to what the best design would be, and if you choose wrong you'd be screwed for the rest of the season. You can't prototype for 2-3 weeks in a 4 week build season. Thus, the general quality of robots at the competition would plummet. Autonomous would be nearly non-existent.

You can also pretty much write off any outside machine shop/powder-coating/anodizing sponsor unless they REALLY love helping your team. The only teams with more than a handful of CNC parts will be ones that own their own CNC mill.

Mother nature and blizzards may be a huge problem now, but imagine with a 4 week build season would be catastrophic to loose a week with no withholding. Catastrophic as in throwing in the towel, cutting your losses, and making a super drivetrain defense robot weighted down with cinder blocks because you'll have no hope of honestly fixing or completing any scoring mechanisms.

If a situation arose such as what occurred to me this past build season (I was in China for business for the first three weeks), I'd have no real impact in a 4 week build season.

You can probably forget going through a comprehensive engineering design process in a 4 week build season. Forget iteration and fully CADding everything, just grab random scrap, bolt it together, and hope it works. Think Junkyard Wars. While it may have been fun to watch on television, the less time you have to build, the less time you have to teach and inspire.




// Side comment:
One interesting idea to reduce how much teams could scrap and rebuild from scratch a new robot with an eliminated ship date and bag-n-tag is to use a non-resetting BOM for the entire season. E.g. if you show up to a Week 1 event with a BOM totalling $2500 of parts, you only have $1500 left over for new parts for the remainder of the season unless you reuse parts from your original robot. If the BOMs have to be submitted to TIMS and are locked into a read-only status after a regional (with only the ability to add new items, not delete any old ones), then this effectively limits the scope of how much you can scrap and start over.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by IKE

I would argue that you need a "Stop Build Day" for a reason slightly different han what most are calling for. I have been involved in a lot of project related actitivites, and a lot of project related teams. Almost to a rule, there is a "last minute push" on the projects to meet deadlines. Sometimes the project is small, and the last minute push is a long day of effort. Sometimes an all-nighter. Sometimes a hard week. Sometimes a long tiring month.
Currently Build season is a 6 week push, and at the end of 6 weeks, msot teams have a fairly reasonable prototype that generally has some functionality. Giving them additional access points and time will imrpove the quality useability of that prototype, to an extent. If the access is too universal, and if the access is too open, then there will be a shift towards teams "changing the due date". While many argue this would be better, I actually think for a large portion of teams, this would be significantly worse.

...

What if all teams had to attend a mandatory* "Week Zero" event to go through initial inspection and to do a "functional test" on a real field with maybe a few practice matches to help teams sort out their bugs?

Real world projects have intermediate deadlines with through aspects like design reviews or engineering prototypes. And with large areas looking to expand to Districts, keeping nearly all teams within reasonable driving distance of a "week zero" event is fairly reasonable.

Or what if there was a "Blackout date" from the current ship date extending for one week, after which you could unbag your robot again?

* Unless explicitly waivered as being too difficult to attend due to travel distances.

[Ed Law]

Originally Posted by IKE

I would argue that you need a "Stop Build Day" for a reason slightly different han what most are calling for. I have been involved in a lot of project related actitivites, and a lot of project related teams. Almost to a rule, there is a "last minute push" on the projects to meet deadlines. Sometimes the project is small, and the last minute push is a long day of effort. Sometimes an all-nighter. Sometimes a hard week. Sometimes a long tiring month.
Currently Build season is a 6 week push, and at the end of 6 weeks, msot teams have a fairly reasonable prototype that generally has some functionality. Giving them additional access points and time will imrpove the quality useability of that prototype, to an extent. If the access is too universal, and if the access is too open, then there will be a shift towards teams "changing the due date". While many argue this would be better, I actually think for a large portion of teams, this would be significantly worse.

I would personally keep the deadline as is, and do a "hands off week". Hug you family, feed the dog, ... hands off the robot in the bag. If you make a practice bot, go crazy, but for everyone else, get some rest.

I would then allow for 6 hours each week of unbag time weeks 1-7. This time can be used for practice, test and tune, fix what got broekn in the finals at the last event.. Whatever you choose. It is just that the robot can only be out of the bag 6 hours (or 4 or 78 or 12 or...), and no blocks shorter than 1 hour. FiM uses 2 hours, and it is a bit of a pain. 1 hour minimum would be more flexible and allow for practice.

In short, keep the "Stop Build", but allow for more test and tune windows. Test and tune windows should make it very hard to decide whether or not to do a practice bot. I personally believe 6 hours each week would be right around the level necessary to make it a hard decision.

I really like this idea. However I don't think it should become a hard decision whether to build a practice robot or not. It should be a easy decision for most teams but for the super competitive people, they will decide to build one anyway. I would like to modify a little. After the stop build date, have the one week of hand off time for everybody on the competition robot. Then if a team has no event in a given week, they will be given 9 hours in one hour increment. If a team has an event to attend, they will be given 6 hours because they will be able to access their robot during competition. This will even the playing field a little for teams who does not have the resources to attend multiple events and registered for a late week event. If I have 9 hours a week, I will not build a practice robot which as I said before will allow me to reduce the number of meetings from 5 to 4 per week. Putting some limit will prevent people from building a brand new robot for championship after watching week 1 or 2 events. There should still be a 30 pound limit or higher to prevent completely new robot.

Let me expand on the reason behind this proposal.
1) There is no change in the deadline, 6 1/2 weeks. FIRST can continue to advertise that this is a 6 1/2 week program. People who like a deadline because it is how it works in the real world and they want students to learn that will get what they want.
2) One week of hands off time will force everybody to take a break from the competition robot and rest. This will also allow international and teams that have to ship their robot to register for a week 1 event with no disadvantage. Supercompetitive teams and individuals can continue to work on their practice robots. Some teams can concentrate on their awards submission and preparation during this week.
3) 9 hours of access in weeks that teams do not have events will give them enough time to not have to build a practice robot. This saves time and money and makes some people happy. This gives teams more time during build season. Some will choose to meet less and some will choose to do more with that extra time. It also allows room to use those extra time to catch up due to snow days for some unfortunate people. This 9 hours access time will also help rookie teams and less resourceful teams to get help from other veteran teams to get their robot to work as it was designed to. This will raise the bottom like Jim said earlier.
4) 6 hours of access in weeks that teams have events is the same as what we do in Michigan and MAR. It works well and reduce stress because it is more efficient use of time when you are at your own shop and practice facility. This increases the number of teams ready for inspection on the first day.
5) Keeping withholding allowance and maximum access time per week will prevent teams to copy other designs and build a completely new robot. That will alleviate some people's concern.
6) For those people who do not want an extended build season. They can register for a week 1 or 2 event and finish their season early. If they qualify for world championship, it is up to them whether they want to continue to improve their robot or not. If they want to improve their robot, they can only work 9 hours a week on the robot. That will keep them from working on the robot nonstop for those who do not have self control. If they don't qualify which most teams don't, their season will be over and they can go back to doing other things.

Feel free to propose anything and modify these if this proposal does not make you happy. If you are neutral about it, please support it so other people can be happy, okay?

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

I really like this idea. However I don't think it should become a hard decision whether to build a practice robot or not. It should be a easy decision for most teams but for the super competitive people, they will decide to build one anyway. I would like to modify a little. After the stop build date, have the one week of hand off time for everybody on the competition robot. Then if a team has no event in a given week, they will be given 9 hours in one hour increment. If a team has an event to attend, they will be given 6 hours because they will be able to access their robot during competition. This will even the playing field a little for teams who does not have the resources to attend multiple events and registered for a late week event. If I have 9 hours a week, I will not build a practice robot which as I said before will allow me to reduce the number of meetings from 5 to 4 per week. Putting some limit will prevent people from building a brand new robot for championship after watching week 1 or 2 events. There should still be a 30 pound limit or higher to prevent completely new robot.

This is the best proposal I've seen yet. Sign me up.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

I really like this idea. However I don't think it should become a hard decision whether to build a practice robot or not. It should be a easy decision for most teams but for the super competitive people, they will decide to build one anyway. I would like to modify a little. After the stop build date, have the one week of hand off time for everybody on the competition robot. Then if a team has no event in a given week, they will be given 9 hours in one hour increment. If a team has an event to attend, they will be given 6 hours because they will be able to access their robot during competition. This will even the playing field a little for teams who does not have the resources to attend multiple events and registered for a late week event. If I have 9 hours a week, I will not build a practice robot which as I said before will allow me to reduce the number of meetings from 5 to 4 per week. Putting some limit will prevent people from building a brand new robot for championship after watching week 1 or 2 events. There should still be a 30 pound limit or higher to prevent completely new robot.

I really like this proposal. It gives everyone a chance to access their robots later in the season on a uniform basis and can give lower resource teams who can't build a practice robot the time they need to practice/tune code and make any necessary changes.

It steps toward an open style season while still keeping the 6 week project like deadline but doesn't keep every team pressured to stay working constantly like an open season would.

I wouldn't mind seeing this in 2014!

[EricH]

I'm with Ed (and anybody else who has proposed a similar "limited access" period).

It gives teams a reason not to build a practice robot (saving money/time) while not restricting the use thereof (you want to use extra time to build an extra robot, that's your call).

It gives a hard deadline, while still allowing for "warranty support".


Now, will the burnout continue? If teams let it (see my note about the practice robot), yes. However, I hope that such a schedule will help teams learn self-discipline. You get 6-9 hours of time with the robot each week, schedule wisely and maybe do some work ahead of time to prep (say, tune the 30-point climber again).

My one issue is the 30-lb withholding (no battery or bumpers) remaining at that level. As teams will have a minimum of 6 hours with their competition robot before their first event, I would propose decreasing the withholding to 15 lb, plus whatever happens to be in the bag as far as parts that you didn't quite have time to put on the robot. (Shipping teams get 30 lb plus crate contents, to make up for the 6 hours.)

[Ed Law]

Originally Posted by EricH

I'm with Ed (and anybody else who has proposed a similar "limited access" period).

It gives teams a reason not to build a practice robot (saving money/time) while not restricting the use thereof (you want to use extra time to build an extra robot, that's your call).

It gives a hard deadline, while still allowing for "warranty support".


Now, will the burnout continue? If teams let it (see my note about the practice robot), yes. However, I hope that such a schedule will help teams learn self-discipline. You get 6-9 hours of time with the robot each week, schedule wisely and maybe do some work ahead of time to prep (say, tune the 30-point climber again).

My one issue is the 30-lb withholding (no battery or bumpers) remaining at that level. As teams will have a minimum of 6 hours with their competition robot before their first event, I would propose decreasing the withholding to 15 lb, plus whatever happens to be in the bag as far as parts that you didn't quite have time to put on the robot. (Shipping teams get 30 lb plus crate contents, to make up for the 6 hours.)

I see your reasoning to reduce from 30 pounds since you have more access. I can go with that unless there is a big snow storm. Isn't that why they increased it to 30 pounds that year?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

I see your reasoning to reduce from 30 pounds since you have more access. I can go with that unless there is a big snow storm. Isn't that why they increased it to 30 pounds that year?

Actually... They didn't. I looked it up; it went from 40 to 65 in 2010 due to the storm. 2009, 40. There is no CD discussion that I can find from before 2009; I believe the 30 lb was a response to the large amounts teams brought in in 2010. (I don't quite remember, but wasn't 2011 the first year of Bag-and-Tag for non-MI teams? If so, that would also explain some of the drop.)

I suggest that if there's a snow storm and teams can't get to their robots, they get all the out-of-bag time that they missed "credited" so that they don't miss any out-of bag. Whether they take the time before or after the initial bagging is up to them.

[IKE]

Ed,
Very nice. I like where you are going wtih that. I have been holding up writing a recommendation to FRC waiting for the add on ideas you put in. I will probably wait another week to see if any other powerful ideas come out in this discussion.