Advice For Agile/Scrum Robot Development

[Sid323]

Originally Posted by philso

From what I have read of SCRUM and similar development processes, an underlying assumption is that all participants are committed to "doing what it takes" to achieve the same goal. The whole team must also be trained in that management technique ahead of time and accept being managed in that way. A typical FRC team may have a small core of committed team members but the remainder usually come and go in an unpredictable way. The team members who are assigned a task and don't show up cannot be managed, making everybody frustrated.

I am not against such development processes. Two jobs ago, we used a "concurrent design" process to put out a very complex product involving electrical hardware, mechanical and software design in a relatively short time with everything coming together very smoothly even though the development work was done in three different countries.

I am worried about the same commitment issues that you mentioned. While we have a core of members who have both experience and commitment, quite a bit of our team is new, and not many of them have shown true commitment so far. Whether it was slacking off during previous meetings or not showing up at all, I think the main problem was that they were not engaged. Essentially, they weren't sure what to do, so they didn't do much at all.

I think this can be solved by having everyone involved from the very start, but how much can completely new members contribute at the very start of the season? While I'm sure they will have crucial contributions, I think that they will need their sub-team leaders and mentors to keep a close eye on them and hold them accountable for the sprints they choose to pursue.