Mythical Six Week Build Season

[Amanda Morrison]

I need some break in the spring to work on my senior design project, so I want there to still be a limit.

By this point families want their members that they loaned to the team back. College work needs to be caught up. Yards and houses that have been ignored need worked on. Prepping for classes and other jobs needs to be done. Winding down and catching up on sleep is a health problem that needs to be addressed. I also miss being home enough to cook some meals.

I hate stop build because it's an obstacle when working with my team, but I love it because it saves me from myself

...most people on our team(students, teachers and mentors alike) are about ready for a break by stop build day, so we enforce it as a hard deadline.

For the 2 years I've been in FRC, I've always pushed the envelope as regards time management: it's difficult for me to maintain the grades that I require of myself

I wanted to point these out as this theme continues in this thread. How many of us are holding FIRST's competition structure responsible for our own lack of time management/self restraint during build season?

So asks one very, very guilty party, herself. I didn't quote those to single anyone out - I am rarely one to find an adequate life balance when I have a goal in mind. Competition structure amplifies this. How many people want to show up to the table completely outclassed? I am reading that we are concerned with our individual 'me' times, but what I think we're really saying are these points:

- To stay competitive, we'd have to completely revamp the comfortable and expected structure & schedule we've had in place for our team, especially where our own personal limitations/boundaries have been set. This may mean someone else may have to help pick up the slack when leading the team or the build.

- To do what's best for our teams with this new deadline, we'd have to determine if our current competition strategy changes in any way based on the resource levels of our team and the competitions available to us, and decide what would work best for us/in our region (e.g., "Early or late regional?", "Regional location"?). We already do this to a point, but our first year of this new competition structure would be a big question.

- It is a relative unknown how my team will react to having the extra time. I do know what needs to be accomplished in six weeks. I don't necessarily know what we can create in 8, 10, 12 weeks, or how to schedule that, limit that, budget that. It's an unknown, well, because we haven't done it before.

I have mixed feelings, and it brings up a lot of questions for me.

Why is design convergence bad? What are the students learning that they would not learn otherwise?
Why is the deadline of my first competition date (which is known before build season) any different than the existing, somewhat-by-choice deadline of stop build day?
How does day 1 of competitions change without teams seeing a different robot on CD and then working like crazy to change/needing to refine their bagged robot?
How would my team change their overall meeting schedule for a late regional? An early one?

All of these could be a thread on their own. What I have realized from the fact-based points brought up in this thread, and did not previously consider, is that FIRST would have to seriously think through how this would affect teams that must ship to their events due to location, and if that disadvantage is severe.

Most other assumptions here are in fact speculations made without any real data, so I'm weighing those as personal viewpoint without factual analysis.

I don't know if lower-resource teams will have a tougher time, or find it easier to have a more competitive robot. Even if not as competitive as the top tier.
I don't know the percentage of teams that already build a second robot or at least a partial build. I was surprised by Collin's post.
I don't know if higher-resource teams will spread out the work, or continue to work at a six week schedule with bonus for driver training.
I don't know how the challenge of the game will change any of this. Minibot year vs. endless recycling vs. FIRST Frenzy with many tasks.
I don't know if more teams will experience burnout, or if it may relieve burnout with the added burden of finding someone else to help.

I have been on teams on both extreme ends of the spectrum - from extremely successful seasons to one-and-done regionals where we came in last or nearly last with a completely non-functioning robot. I'm still pondering how this schedule would have changed those teams, but the above questions are still kicking around in my brain. I think my next step is an old-fashioned pros and cons list.

[Jessi Kaestle]

This topic seems to come up every year, and on average the general consensus here seems to trend towards eliminating Stop Build Day. I have two main counters to this trend.

Mentor/Team Burn-Out and Level-Loading Higher and Lower Resource Teams: I grouped these together because they are connected when it comes to the lower resource teams. Though some have brought it up, it seems to me from reading this thread that some here have lost sight that Chief Delphi is not a proper sampling of FIRST Robotics Competition Teams as a whole. Most lower resource teams that I have talked with drastically reduce how long they meet in the weeks between stop build day and competition. So when deciding if mentor (and/or student) burn-out would happen, remember that you should be thinking of the teams that struggle to have enough mentors (and/or students) during build season due to the current time commitments already being a massive deterrent. As a result I don’t think the elimination of stop-build day will level-load these teams with their higher-resource counterparts, if anything it might just move them further down the bracket in terms of competitiveness.

Teaching Real-World Engineering: This to me is the larger, if not largest, reason to keep stop build day. Whenever I am explaining FIRST to someone who is deciding if they are going to provide me something* based on what the program is I ALWAYS use that it teaches “Real-World Engineering” as a selling point. Then go on to explain that the students have a strict timeline, budget, and build constraints like they will once (if?) they get an engineering job post-grad. In addition to being a selling point, it is also a good teaching point. Once these students enter the work force they will not have a deadline that they get to decide (teams decide which events they do, if we eliminate stop build day, this will become a bigger deal than it already is), nor will they have extended time to study and analyze the competition then completely rework their work to take advantage of the lessons they learned from their competition.**

*the something could be team based such as funding or mentors; student based such as a scholarship or university admissions offer; event based such as volunteers; or personal based such as a job offer.

**This already happens to an extent, but I envision would get worse if stop build day was eliminated.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

And how does that compare to the 6 week build season? In my experience, it is entirely possible to build a successful robot in 6 weeks. It's also possible to blow your own schedule and not meet the deadline. Figuring out how to deal with that, the importance of checkpoints and adjustments along the way is a crucial part of engineering.

Sure anyone should be able able to assemble the KOP and have a driving robot and very likely an end effector in 6 weeks.

Will assembling that KOP teach you about programming? Not so much.
Will assembling that KOP teach you about CNC? Not so much.
Will assembling that KOP teach you electronics? Not even a FIRST goal for the most part (hence we provide the control system).

My point: what is your goal to merely build a robot to show up on the field?

My goal is not just to build a robot, it's to educate and mentor students in the skills that built that robot. So will I be successful? Sure I will reduce my scope till we succeed at the price of my goals which are larger than the time provided.

I can do this even faster. I can just build the robot myself with 2 or 3 trained engineers and let the students watch and learn how it is done. Accumulating none of the tactile education they could have gotten. Heck I've built military robots I can just show up and hand them the controls teaching them with the right amout of money you can buy someone else's hard work. Military probably prefer this anyway: drone pilots that when they retire no longer have drones.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

We will do more development and iteration during the competition season than the build season.

This is important to me, because I find improving a marginally effective robot to be the most inspiring part of FRC competition. Stopping at a robot that almost works or sort of works is sad. The stop build date leaves a lot of teams stuck at that point in the process.

[MrForbes]

techhelpbb: You already have the rest of the year to learn all that fun stuff.

I'm surprised how many people seem to think that you can improve teams' time management skills by simply giving them more time. It doesn't work that way.

It only takes 3 days to build a robot.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

I think my next step is an old-fashioned pros and cons list.

I support this but I worry that such a rubric would be royal pain to scope.
This would require some serious thought to do and I doubt it would be as straight forward as a vote with no context.

I guess the first step is to agree there's a good reason to consider it and that it will result in action from FIRST who governs all this.

Originally Posted by MrForbes

techhelpbb: You already have the rest of the year to learn all that fun stuff.

I'm surprised how many people seem to think that you can improve teams' time management skills by simply giving them more time. It doesn't work that way.

It only takes 3 days to build a robot.

Actually we really do not have the whole year:

It is very likely you can loose the summer if the school is where the tools are and the tools are not mobile.

If the students participate in other activities it is hard without a structure provided to keep them engaged. Yes the deadline serves this purpose but there are better ways.

On the other hand, as I pointed out before, weather can be dangerous and storms do not move just because someone sets a deadline. Also a lot of business have critical deadlines in those first 6 weeks of a year. When it comes down to it this is about time management: do you manage the time that pays the bills and feeds you family or do you manage the time for something that extends critical missing skills into your school system that taxes the money you earn to continue to operate?

Again I can build a robot in 1 day with the parts in my barn right now. What does it do for my community to do that?

[marshall]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

It only takes 3 days to build a robot.

I can be done in less time.

[Michael Blake]

This may have been mentioned earlier and I missed the post but I remember a video back in 2011 where Dean Kamen was explaining a purposeful _feature_ of FRC was the 6 Week Build-period.

Dean explained that he wanted FRC teams to have a close to real-life engineering experience where students were given a substantial project to complete, like professional engineers get everyday, without the best budget and not enough time.

I believe he said a survey was done of engineers asking generally how much time their bosses give them to take a concept and then deliver a working machine and the average time came out to 6 weeks--so that's the genesis right there.

I think we need to look at 6 week build as a baked-in pillar by the founder.

On our team since our 2nd season/2012 we have built full-twin practice bots (minus the powder coating) and we just keep whacking-on-it (our term for being iterative - lol) and moving the improvements over to the comp bot till our season ends--we never stop improving/learning.

But we're a well-funded team, hopefully again this season, and I get the cost barrier to some teams to producing a 2nd practice bot. However, there's a way around this, not perfect but it works, and is the approach we took in our Rookie year/2011 when we unexpectedly were on the Alamo winning alliance and on our way to Champs.

What we did was take a load of pictures and exact measurements of our only bot before it was bagged/tagged and impounded for Champs and then we built an inexpensive wood-framed replica of the chassis/structures in order to add an extensive Minibot feature that was completely missing from our competition bot. We put the wood chassis on casters and hand pushed the "bot" to approach and line-up for Minibot deployment--it worked really well in the shop and when we dismantled and installed on the bot in St. Louis everything fit perfectly.

Because of this approach of finding a way to make it work... we were able to have a new offensive capability that resulted in Ranking 17th in Archimedes in 2011--though no one picked us--yes it still stings. ;-)

I only provide this info to highlight that there are ways to achieve success even with a 6 Week Build-period _and_ not enough money to have a second practice bot.

--Michael Blake

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

We are going to build three robots (1 comp and 2 practice) for 2016.

Why?

The competition season is longer than the build season.

We will do more development and iteration during the competition season than the build season.

We want two robots to iterate faster during the competition season.

I think its clear that the gap is wide between us and low resource teams because we have the money to buy 3x of robot parts, and get to play with two robots post-stop build, and low resource teams get to play with zero robots post-stop build.

You make the call if the gap shrinks when low-resource teams get to play with their one and only robot while we're playing with our two or three robots.

We meet 4 days a week.

-Mike

This, I think, is the crucial point right here.

And I hear the people who are talking about burnout. I am very nearly burned-out myself at this point, having invested far more of myself in FRC over these past few years than was at all wise for a college student (in fact, I am still deciding to what extent I will be involved this coming season, even though I will have graduated by then - I do not think it would be healthy for me to repeat what I've been doing). But a six-week build season did not make the burnout any less bad, because as has been noted, work never really stops after the robot is in the bag.

In 2014, I spent the entirety of my spring break scrambling to hobble together a practice bot so that we could debug and drive test a design that was put in the bag without ever having actually run. Sure, this was a "choice" - but the "choice" was between this and a guaranteed flop at our first regional. How many mentors do you know who'd have chosen the latter? And the fact is, we barely got that practice bot together, at rather huge out-of-pocket cost to some of our students' parents, to boot. The cost to our team from not having access to our robot after bag day was massive.

I do not think this is a cost that is equal across teams of wildly varying resources, and for that reason I think the bag day should go.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

Sure anyone should be able able to assemble the KOP and have a driving robot and very likely an end effector in 6 weeks.

Will assembling that KOP teach you about programming? Not so much.
Will assembling that KOP teach you about CNC? Not so much.
Will assembling that KOP teach you electronics? Not even a FIRST goal for the most part (hence we provide the control system).

My point: what is your goal to merely build a robot to show up on the field?

My goal is not just to build a robot, it's to educate and mentor students in the skills that built that robot. So will I be successful? Sure I will reduce my scope till we succeed at the price of my goals which are larger than the time provided.

I can do this even faster. I can just build the robot myself with 2 or 3 trained engineers and let the students watch and learn how it is done. Accumulating none of the tactile education they could have gotten. Heck I've built military robots I can just show up and hand them the controls teaching them with the right amout of money you can buy someone else's hard work. Military probably prefer this anyway: drone pilots that when they retire no longer have drones.

Again, your missing the point. You can build a SUCCESSFUL robot in 6 weeks. Over the past 9 years, my team has only made significant changes at competition twice. We've been finalists 3 times, winners twice, and almost always play in eliminations (usually as captain or first round pick). And all of that is done with a student led team that emphasizes training and experience over getting the perfect robot out. Sure, if it was just the mentors on our team building, we'd be done in a week. But the mentors do very, very little building.

The point is, the schedule may be a limiting factor to how much you can do, but it shouldn't be a limiting factor in producing a successful robot if your team can develop a good process and plan for the season.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

I could see arguments to both. As a team that builds a practice bot, I'm sure our team is for removing stop build day since we work through competitions season anyways. That being said, low resource teams or teams with not so time committed mentors might not like the change. Stop build day is a good excuse for mentors to not have to work for another 6-8 weeks and although building a practice bot is an option, it's a HUGE obstacle a team has to overcome both financially and time wise in order to continue working after stop build day. By removing the obstacle, their really isn't that great of an excuse to stop working other than the fact that you don't want to and all the less time committed mentors would be looked at as real bad guys. Heck the rest of the school might look down upon the team if they stopped working after 6 weeks when their season is 12. So yes while teams that don't want to work past 6 weeks could just decide not to, there is a lot of pressure to continue working, especially if the students want to(let's be real, most students would want to).

I'm okay with whatever FIRST decides. Especially since the scenario I laid out is probably the reality of the majority of FRC teams. Even some higher caliber teams as indicated in this thread shows this.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Again, your missing the point. You can build a SUCCESSFUL robot in 6 weeks. Over the past 9 years, my team has only made significant changes at competition twice. We've been finalists 3 times, winners twice, and almost always play in eliminations (usually as captain or first round pick). And all of that is done with a student led team that emphasizes training and experience over getting the perfect robot out. Sure, if it was just the mentors on our team building, we'd be done in a week. But the mentors do very, very little building.

The point is, the schedule may be a limiting factor to how much you can do, but it shouldn't be a limiting factor in producing a successful robot if your team can develop a good process and plan for the season.

That's fine. You built the robot and it placed highly in competition.
My point is that building the robot is not enough.
The fact you can take longer to build the robot is not always about adding features.

Team 11 & 193 (both in Mount Olive High School) both student led teams build generally at least 3 robots sometimes 4 in 6 weeks. Sometimes we add on a few prototypes as we go. One major reason we split the team was because with so many people on just Team 11 wouldn't get the full experience they could have. Now we facilitate that at the cost of a whole extra team.

So it's not just about building the robot. If it was I wouldn't need FIRST.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

This may have been mentioned earlier and I missed the post but I remember a video back in 2011 that I saw where Dean Kamen was explaining a purposeful _feature_ of FRC was the 6 Week Build-period.
...
I think we need to look at 6 week build as a baked-in pillar by the founder.
...
--Michael Blake

YES!

The program's founder(s) and eminent spokesmen, are publicly proud about this. It's definitely a feature, and not a problem.

I don't remember ever hearing one of them complain that the best (or any) on-field robots needed a few more weeks of work put into them. I don't remember ever hearing them complain that participants aren't receiving enough vocational training.

I do remember hearing them encourage everyone in FRC spend time adding/inspiring new participants, and helping rookies or struggling vets have a good, inspiring, experience.

Encouraging everyone to invest any excess competitive passion into looking outward, rather than inward, remains my 2¢

Blake

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by gblake

I do remember hearing them encourage everyone in FRC spend time adding/inspiring new participants, and helping rookies or struggling vets have a good, inspiring, experience.

Encouraging everyone to invest any excess competitive passion into looking outward, rather than inward, remains my 2¢

Blake

That's actually my point. I am not sure that we are making this easily accessible with that deadline. So even if we can inspire we are inspiring people to do something hard and in the process we are raising the cost to them.

However we are often not raising the costs (consider all the various kinds of cost) in the same way for everyone. Pardon me for saying but I see no study that shows what the impact of this deadline is. Shouldn't that be the barometer: an act of scientific understanding?

I mean I understand the value of our leaders here, but then again no organization can run on shear good will alone.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Michael Blake

I think we need to look at 6 week build as a baked-in pillar by the founder.

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

So for my money, I am all for keeping the six week build.

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

Asking for students to sacrifice other aspects of their life for 6 weeks is fair, given the massive benefits that FRC brings. It is not, however, reasonable to expect that students give much more than that, because we're getting to the point where it will prevent students from joining, or even continuing with the team.

Originally Posted by Jessi Kaestle

Teaching Real-World Engineering: This to me is the larger, if not largest, reason to keep stop build day.

Except you can already keep building after 6 weeks if you want to! Current "stop build day" is only a stop build day if you are unwilling (or financially/logistically unable) to continue working on your withholding allowance and/or a second robot.

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

In FRC, your bagged robot is version 1.0. You keep working on improvements, and practice day at the event you change it to 1.1. Then you see how it does on the field, design other improvements, and address those for version 1.2 at your next event. Take away stop-build, and your short changing that cycle, in my opinion.

I think (the general lack of) local access to good practice fields is what short changes the cycle. Many teams don't put their "1.0" robot on anything resembling an FRC field until their first competition, and then they have to react and scramble to adjust without their robot in their shop. This is why year after year, the stats show that robots get dramatically better after their first event.

I agree that if you made build season 8 or 10 weeks long and don't address this, many teams will show up to their first event with little more than slightly more polished versions of the same robots they show up with now. The difference is that getting to 1.1 and 1.2 (and in some cases 2.0) has fewer barriers. The difference between your 1.0 and 1.1 robots can be the difference between a student having a wholly disappointing experience and an extremely rewarding one - every team should have that opportunity, and shouldn't have to work through artificial barriers to do so!