I (and others) have posted on this topic
before. Poke around and you'll find a lot.
The short answer is that no schedule can really be kept perfectly, but without a schedule you'll find yourself scrambling more than is healthy.
If you learn anything over the years, it's Design First, Build Second. We all want to get to the solution step, but you need to define what you will do to win the game, what capabilities you need to do that, and what mechanisms you need to get those capabilities.
Only then can you consider building anything.
Give yourself a week to design everything - including prototypes and proofs of concept. Build in weeks 2 and 3, iterate in week 4 to finalize everything. Hand that off to programming, and build another
exactly like it but without the 'mistakes', and that's what gets bagged in week 6. If you take 'exactly' to heart, your drivers can practice with that first robot (this is the key to a winning team BTW).
your time is better spent in the stands, watching what the robots actually do, as opposed to listening to the builders talk about what they're [I]supposed[/I] to do. - sanddrag [more] 
06-12-2013, 20:37
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