What can FIRST do to increase FRC team sustainability?

[GeeTwo]

Having been a peripheral member of our team in it's rookie year, and a serious mentor since then, (just finished our fifth year), I've been involved in a few serious "can we keep the team together through this" moments (mostly second and third year), and a few where it wasn't so serious, but the question arose. I have also been following and contributed to a number of (often anonymous OP) "Help, My Team is About to Fall Apart" threads. While the numbers are impressions, not statistics, it seems that about 75-85% of these issues center on resources - whether money, mentors, head coach, build space, or (rarely) student team members, or a combination. The other 15-25% were based on interpersonal conflict.

None of 3946's crises or the threads I recall (including a wide sampling of threads from before I joined, as I like to click on highlight threads) boiled down to:

Originally Posted by nobody

We just can't build a competitive robot in 6-1/2 weeks, so we're going to give up the team. If we'd had 10 weeks without a bag, we could have held it together.

While ending Bag and Tag is likely to raise the level of competition, I see no reason to think that it will improve sustainability, which was the question.

On interpersonal issues, FIRST has limited ability to help resolve the issues systematically. The only way I can think of to help in these cases is to better advertise the FIRST senior mentors to student team members, and possibly to increase the number of senior mentors to accommodate the increased load. Based on the relatively small number of these issues and the lack of leverage that Senior Mentors have in the politics affecting an individual team, I would not be surprised if this is just too expensive for the benefit to be worthwhile.

On the resource front, there are a number of things that FIRST could do, some of which might be worth the cost.

Dollars: Approach large, distributed tech and manufacturing companies, and have them commit some corporate funding to FIRST team sponsorships. Based on our experience, it is much easier to get support from a company headquartered nearby than it is to get support from a company headquartered elsewhere, even if it has a local office/production center. By working through global headquarters and emphasizing local funding, FIRST could probably grease the skids to spread funding around.

Mentors - FIRST does nothing as far as I am aware to help recruit mentors. FIRST could work through professional organizations such as ACM, IEEE, SAE, and so forth to put out the word that mentoring a FIRST team is a great way to inspire future members of these organizations. FIRST could also provide a "clearinghouse" to help prospective mentors and teams find each other, and/or work with sponsors to encourage mentorship.

Costs - Somehow reduce the entry-level cost each year. I look forward to competing in a district format someday, but as a way of increasing what the team can do with the same amount of funding, not as a fount of sustainability.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Mentors - FIRST does nothing as far as I am aware to help recruit mentors. FIRST could work through professional organizations such as ACM, IEEE, SAE, and so forth to put out the word that mentoring a FIRST team is a great way to inspire future members of these organizations. FIRST could also provide a "clearinghouse" to help prospective mentors and teams find each other, and/or work with sponsors to encourage mentorship.

Best suggestion in the entire thread.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Having been a peripheral member of our team in it's rookie year, and a serious mentor since then, (just finished our fifth year), I've been involved in a few serious "can we keep the team together through this" moments (mostly second and third year), and a few where it wasn't so serious, but the question arose. I have also been following and contributed to a number of (often anonymous OP) "Help, My Team is About to Fall Apart" threads. While the numbers are impressions, not statistics, it seems that about 75-85% of these issues center on resources - whether money, mentors, head coach, build space, or (rarely) student team members, or a combination. The other 15-25% were based on interpersonal conflict.

None of 3946's crises or the threads I recall (including a wide sampling of threads from before I joined, as I like to click on highlight threads) boiled down to:

While ending Bag and Tag is likely to raise the level of competition, I see no reason to think that it will improve sustainability, which was the question.

No surprise that I wholeheartedly agree with this evidence-based line of thinking.

The evidence is most definitely anecdotal, but it isn't contradicted by anything in my experience, or by anything posted here yet.

There is speculation that near the end of an extended build season some healthy teams will switch from improving their own prospects to helping struggling teams get over the hump. I don't doubt that some will (more than they do now), but I don't think that an extended build season is necessary for that, nor do I think that the change (across all of FRC) will be non-trivial (FRC losses about 8% of it's teams annually. How many teams will receive enough extra help if the build season lengthens?).

If there are other reasons to lengthen the build season, they can be debated outside this thread, but without evidence off a stronger connection between the two, don't advocate doing it to increase sustainability.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by gblake

If there are other reasons to lengthen the build season, they can be debated outside this thread, but without evidence off a stronger connection between the two, don't advocate doing it to increase sustainability.

I will say it again: I think there are a lot of us that feel it is relevant to the sustainability of FRC teams and that is what this thread is about.

I've got another big reason to end bag and tag for sustainability... cost to FIRST. I don't mean merely money. It costs FIRST very little from a resources perspective to end it. In fact, it saves them on bags, zip ties, and the headache involved with that portion of the inspection process.

That savings doesn't help teams become more sustainable but in comparison to other ideas in this thread, it costs FIRST pretty much nothing from a resources perspective. It is low hanging fruit.

There are a lot of us that think it will help with team sustainability by enabling teams to become more competitive and giving them that "Eureka!" moment that creates an impetus to come back and do it all over again and again in spite of failure. When that moment never comes you get burnout, exhaustion, frustration, funding dries up, and participation ends.

I have seen my share of teams collapse over the years and I'd like to think ending bag and tag would have helped more than a few of them by showing them that this program can be very rewarding. I can't predict alternative outcomes but I'm not going to let someone else who can't predict them either tell me I should take my very reasonable ideas and go home... that's not how arguing on the Internet works.

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

75-85% of these issues center on resources - whether money, mentors, head coach, build space, or (rarely) student team members, or a combination. The other 15-25% were based on interpersonal conflict.

None of 3946's crises or the threads I recall (including a wide sampling of threads from before I joined, as I like to click on highlight threads) boiled down to: While ending Bag and Tag is likely to raise the level of competition, I see no reason to think that it will improve sustainability, which was the question.

Costs - Somehow reduce the entry-level cost each year. I look forward to competing in a district format someday, but as a way of increasing what the team can do with the same amount of funding, not as a fount of sustainability.

For the love of magic smoke the bag day argument is not just a competitiveness issue! Anyone arguing that increasing competitiveness is the main issue in terms of bag day and sustainability misses the point.

Anyone who thinks bag day doesn't effect things that contribute directly to the sustainability of a team hasn't actually been reading.

"75-85% of these issues center on resources - whether money, mentors, head coach, build space, or (rarely) student team members, or a combination."

Okay lets see how eliminating bag day can help with what you listed...

1. Money

• Reduced shipping costs (edit: when ordering COTS parts)
• Greater ability to get parts made (edit: via outsourcing to sponsors) as opposed to purchasing everything COTS
• More time during the season to worry about other things like fundraising

2.Mentors/Head Coach

• More spare time for experienced mentors to help rookies
• A less frequent meeting schedule can give a mentor, who can only come to a fraction of a teams meetings, more of an effect on the team.*
• Less frequent meetings could give a head coach more time off or more time during the season to deal with admin duties on a week to week basis

3.Build space

• If for whatever reason you need to find build space (unsupportive school for instance) less frequent access needs and shorter necessary access times could make it easier to convince someone to let you use their space.

4.Student team members

• A student who can't currently commit much time to the build season can now show up less frequently and make it to a higher percentage of meetings.

These aren't the only things that can be improved by this (anyone who can add to it please do). This isn't the only way to accomplish this and obviously technical tutorials need to improve and time management training has to come along with it. But now with more time overall you can spend more of it learning without sacrificing the draw of the program.

Finally I totally agree that FIRST needs to make an effort with engineering associations and organizations to improve mentor recruitment (add WIT and SWE to that list). I would also like to see that sort of effort in universities.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by jman4747

I would also like to see that sort of effort in universities.

There was, briefly, a student organization (of which I was never an official member, ironically, though several of my friends and co-mentors were) at the University of Maryland that existed for the purpose of providing mentorship to local FRC teams.

Unfortunately, there was never much support - from FIRST or from the university - and it died after two years.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by jman4747

Okay lets see how eliminating bag day can help with what you listed...

1. Money

• Reduced shipping costs
• Greater ability to get parts made as opposed to purchasing them
• More time during the season to worry about other things like fundraising

Second and third bullet points, I'll have a harder time arguing, so I'll leave it at: for the third, you need to be doing that all year long, and for the second, "You mean we can purchase more parts that might actually get here in time?".

The first one, though, you really didn't think through. Teams already bring their robots to competition. Shipping cost is minimal already for most teams*. So eliminating bag day saves exactly what again? You still need to bring the robot with you to competition.

These aren't the only things that can be improved by this (anyone who can add to it please do). This isn't the only way to accomplish this and obviously technical tutorials need to improve and time management training has to come along with it. But now with more time overall you can spend more of it learning without sacrificing the draw of the program.

Finally I totally agree that FIRST needs to make an effort with engineering associations and organizations to improve mentor recruitment (add WIT and SWE to that list). I would also like to see that sort of effort in universities.

I'll agree on the engineering groups to get better mentor recruitment, and I think technical/time management can improve. But the whole "people will be able to spread out the time" is hogwash.

If you can't manage your time effectively now, you'll be just as unable to effectively spread out your extra X weeks and still get your work done. Meanwhile, the teams that are being very effective already will see that they've got extra time to make better iterations, and manage their time well to get that done. And then there's Parkinson's Law...



Personally... I'd eliminate Withholding Allowance entirely. You get raw materials (unlimited) and COTS (unlimited), and have to finish your work in the pit/onsite machine shop. If it isn't in the bag, and it's fabricated, back to the shop it goes... I realize that that's an unpopular opinion, but that's pretty much how we used to play back when any given regional had something like 40-50 crates to move around.




*The exceptions here are the long-haul teams: HI, South America, China, UK, and just about any other non-North American team that's traveling to North America to compete. Everybody else can drive their robot, meaning that "shipping cost" really means "gas cost", which can be split with the humans also in the transport vehicle that needed to get there anyways. Now, just so you're aware, these teams tend to get their KOPs late, and they need to ship their robots by a designated date just to make the tournament. So they're already at a significant handicap. Eliminating bag day makes that disadvantage worse--might even eliminate some of those teams, many of whom have a hard time on the field already. Just something to chew on here.

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by EricH

Second and third bullet points, I'll have a harder time arguing, so I'll leave it at: for the third, you need to be doing that all year long, and for the second, "You mean we can purchase more parts that might actually get here in time?".

The first one, though, you really didn't think through. Teams already bring their robots to competition. Shipping cost is minimal already for most teams*. So eliminating bag day saves exactly what again? You still need to bring the robot with you to competition.

I made an edit to be more clear on point 1.1 and 1.2. I wrote them poorly. 1.1 I'm referring to COTS parts. 1.2 is referring to how outsourcing machining to sponsors can save you money on buying COTS at the expense of time.

"If you can't manage your time effectively now, you'll be just as unable to effectively spread out your extra X weeks and still get your work done. Meanwhile, the teams that are being very effective already will see that they've got extra time to make better iterations, and manage their time well to get that done. And then there's Parkinson's Law..."

And if you can you will benefit from the extra time to focus on other aspects of running the team or your life if you so chose. Which will be easier when you aren't spending as much money and have more help from veteran teams. I know fundraising is a year round endeavor. Emphasis on year round. With a smaller leadership team it's harder to focus on these efforts during build.

"*The exceptions here are the long-haul teams: HI, South America, China, UK, and just about any other non-North American team that's traveling to North America to compete."

Is that date after the current bag day? because then they would still have more time than they do now.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by jman4747

I made an edit to be more clear on point 1.1 and 1.2. I wrote them poorly. 1.1 I'm referring to COTS parts. 1.2 is referring to how outsourcing machining to sponsors can save you money on buying COTS at the expense of time.

Translation: We can work with a more flexible schedule. That I can buy. Basically, you don't pay the expedited shipping, and you can have someone make more stuff. (I will note that one of my team's sponsors came on very late in build--we had the parts from them in a very short turnaround. We may be the exception, though...)

"If you can't manage your time effectively now, you'll be just as unable to effectively spread out your extra X weeks and still get your work done. Meanwhile, the teams that are being very effective already will see that they've got extra time to make better iterations, and manage their time well to get that done. And then there's Parkinson's Law..."

And if you can you will benefit from the extra time to focus on other aspects of running the team or your life if you so chose. Which will be easier when you aren't spending as much money and have more help from veteran teams. I know fundraising is a year round endeavor. Emphasis on year round. With a smaller leadership team it's harder to focus on these efforts during build.

Parkinson's Law says that there IS no extra time. "Work expands to fill the time allotted."

Basically, you're proving my point: The teams that already manage their time well ("the rich") will continue to do so and get even better ("get richer") (and maybe even take a couple days off, har har) and those that don't... well, guess what? That makes this an even more uneven playing field than before, which can be discouraging. Discouraged teams can become discouraged former teams a little easier than non-discouraged teams can become non-discouraged former teams.

"*The exceptions here are the long-haul teams: HI, South America, China, UK, and just about any other non-North American team that's traveling to North America to compete."

Is that date after the current bag day? because then they would still have more time than they do now.

I don't know, and I would expect that it varies by competition week and where they're coming from anyways. For a Week 1, it might actually be on bag day. For a Week 2... I checked B&T forms for "crate teams" at a Week 2, didn't see any unbag time logged. Not sure about the teams at the Week 4 I was at as I wasn't inspecting.

For those guys, you need to understand: If the robot isn't in the crate, it's gotta travel by suitcase. That gets ugly fast. Now imagine that you not only have to ship the robot, but nobody else has a "hard stop" to building theirs. They get two weeks on you, just of build time. Two weeks is a lot of time in this game.

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by EricH

Translation: We can work with a more flexible schedule. That I can buy. Basically, you don't pay the expedited shipping, and you can have someone make more stuff. (I will note that one of my team's sponsors came on very late in build--we had the parts from them in a very short turnaround. We may be the exception, though...)

Oh you are the exception... before I explained the build schedule to our sheet metal fabricator he quoted 3 weeks for our parts...

I've found most dedicated machine shops have over 4 week turnarounds for milling & turning. Die makers are more. Everyone isn't the same and 2D (water, laser, plasma) is faster but limited. It also depends on time of year or if a tool is down or anything else you don't want to hear in week 4. Iv'e found that business that have these tools but don't just make parts for people (ie. manufacture their own products with them) can be a bit better but A. they have to be able to brake production B. the machinists need to be able to handle more than what the machine normally sees C. these businesses are a bit harder to identify. They don't advertise as job shops so it can be hard to know who would have that kind of tooling.

[bdaroz]

While I think the B&T rules don't necessarily dovetail very well with sustainability, I would be in favor of extending B&T if, and only if, a team does not have their robot capable of passing inspection, or able to perform a minimum of tasks (eg, for Stronghold, move), and allowing work to continue only toward those goals.

This would let struggling teams (not just rookies) get their robot into a competition-ready shape, but not allow them to work on their shooter, for example, until the robot is bagged. Perhaps this would help with some B&T and inspection stresses.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by jman4747

Okay lets see how eliminating bag day can help with what you listed...

I don't understand what side you're advocating. You seem to be trying to say that eliminating bag day would help sustainability, but your arguments do not help me toward that position.

1. Money

• Reduced shipping costs
• Greater ability to get parts made as opposed to purchasing them
• More time during the season to worry about other things like fundraising

How does not putting the robot in a bag do anything to shipping costs?

How does taking longer to make parts save money over making them with a shorter deadline?

How does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?

2.Mentors/Head Coach

• More spare time for experienced mentors to help rookies
• A less frequent meeting schedule can give a mentor, who can only come to a fraction of a teams meetings, more of an effect on the team.*
• Less frequent meetings could give a head coach more time off or more time during the season to deal with admin duties on a week to week basis

Again, how does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?

If a mentor can only come to a fraction of the meetings, how is making the meetings farther apart going to help?

If you're not suggesting fewer meetings total, how does that give anyone more time off?

3.Build space

• If for whatever reason you need to find build space (unsupportive school for instance) less frequent access needs and shorter necessary access times could make it easier to convince someone to let you use their space.

I suppose there might be some contrived situation where it would be more possible to access a space less frequently, but you've totally broken your argument by suggesting that the time you need it would simultaneously be shorter.

4.Student team members

• A student who can't currently commit much time to the build season can now show up less frequently and make it to a higher percentage of meetings.

I don't understand this at all, sorry. If you show up less frequently, how can you attend more?

I assume that you want to argue that a student who can only commit to a certain number of meetings per week will make it to more meetings in total if they are spread out over a longer time. I will grant that as a possibility, but it seems more likely to me that a student who does not have robotics as a priority (for whatever reason) under the current system will not make more of a commitment if the build season gets longer.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I still haven't read one legitimate point about how bag & tag enhances the FIRST experience and makes FRC more sustainable. I've never heard a team state that because of bag & tag specifically that they had a better overall season. I'd love to hear the hard evidence that shows that bag and tag makes FIRST better.

Originally Posted by gblake

If there are other reasons to lengthen the build season, they can be debated outside this thread, but without evidence off a stronger connection between the two, don't advocate doing it to increase sustainability.

How in the world can we produce hard anecdotal evidence for something that has never been tried in FRC? This thread is about discussing ideas that could lead to more sustainability. You don't get to tell people to go debate in some other thread because you don't think an idea won't work. I think it has legs and so do many others.

My 15 years of build season experience over 4 different FRC teams ranging from little resources to many resources tells me that every single one of those teams would have benefited from the removal of bag & tag. Bag & tag literally serves no purpose than to force teams with little to no resources to stop building while teams with mid to high resources don't skip a beat and keep right on going.

I don't get how bag & tag increases sustainability at all, please educate me.

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I don't understand what side you're advocating. You seem to be trying to say that eliminating bag day would help sustainability, but your arguments do not help me toward that position.



How does not putting the robot in a bag do anything to shipping costs?

How does taking longer to make parts save money over making them with a shorter deadline?

How does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?



Again, how does lengthening the "build season" give any more time?

If a mentor can only come to a fraction of the meetings, how is making the meetings farther apart going to help?

If you're not suggesting fewer meetings total, how does that give anyone more time off?



I suppose there might be some contrived situation where it would be more possible to access a space less frequently, but you've totally broken your argument by suggesting that the time you need it would simultaneously be shorter.



I don't understand this at all, sorry. If you show up less frequently, how can you attend more?

I assume that you want to argue that a student who can only commit to a certain number of meetings per week will make it to more meetings in total if they are spread out over a longer time. I will grant that as a possibility, but it seems more likely to me that a student who does not have robotics as a priority (for whatever reason) under the current system will not make more of a commitment if the build season gets longer.

I made edits to clarify the first two so I'll spend some time on 1.3. See my last. I'll add to 1.1 too.

1.1,
Longer time to work means parts don't need to get to you as fast so one of two things happens. A. you ship parts as fast as possible anyway and get done sooner or B. you can now afford to ship things slower and thus cheaper without worrying about the deadline as much.

on 1.3,
If you have a small leadership team and human resources are split between supporting the build effort and more of the work that gets done to maintain a successful program and all the planning for events etc, etc, then if you are able to focus on the build it self less often during the span of a week then you would have more time in that week for other things. Assuming that you spend roughly the same total hrs working on the robot between kickoff and competition as you did between kickoff and Feb X.


On 2

Again if you choose to work roughly the same #of hrs you have more days per week that you won't need physically be at your own program, and more time between meetings to do things like prepare for the next meeting or in the case of 2.1 drive or skype to another team you are working with.

In the case of 2.2,
Say Jim from GE can only spare 2 afternoon week days a week mentoring FRC. Regardless of remote presence options that's all the spare time he has. Lets say this rookie team meets 4 weekdays and a Saturday. That's 30 total team meetings and Jim could do 12 (40%). If the team met 3 weekdays and a Saturday for 8 weeks he made 16 total (50%). More time overall but the mentor also got to guide them through more of the work than before.

2.3,

The problem wouldn't be total work it would be how many different things is this new and likely small mentor base having to juggle at the same time. Burnout is burnout. You need more power to do x amount in 1 unit time than x amount in 2 unit time. I can give a more specific anecdote/example if you want.

3. Say management of X property would rather you end your meetings at 7 but you usually end at 8 on weekdays. Say in six weeks you met 3 weekdays from 5-8 and you can push it up because school. That's 54 hrs of weekdays in 6 weeks. If you have 8 weeks with the same number of weekday meetings you would have 48hrs(89%) as opposed to just 36hrs (67%). Now you have less of a deficit to make up by adding meeting days or adding weekend time (by ~22%). If management of X property didn't care than it wouldn't affect you and would be a wash.

4. Similar to 2.2-3,

If a team meets more often than a student is able to show up they can be left behind or not be able to join. If meetings were less frequent but you still had just as many they would be able to attend a higher percentage of said meetings.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by jman4747

I made edits...

I see what you were getting at regarding costs now. I agree with Eric's summary of the benefit: extending the build season gives you more options for scheduling parts build and delivery.

2.3,

The problem wouldn't be total work it would be how many different things is this new and likely small mentor base having to juggle at the same time. Burnout is burnout. You need more power to do x amount in 1 unit time than x amount in 2 unit time. I can give a more specific anecdote/example if you want.

In my experience, power is not the limiting factor. Energy is. You're trying to argue that doing less for a longer time is preferable to doing more for a shorter time. The counterarguments come at that from both directions: a team that "needs more time" isn't going to benefit from doing the same amount of work across more weeks, and a team that already manages their time effectively is not likely to reduce their power in the way you're suggesting that "struggling" teams will be able to benefit from. You haven't obviously helped anyone, and you have very likely increased the divide between "low-tier" and "high-tier" teams.

I also disagree with your claim that "burnout is burnout". In isolation, that might be true. But add in mentors' families and you will find that it's often calendar days that matter, not just days of high effort. Even if I work with the team only three days per week for eight weeks instead of four days per week for six weeks, I'm still spending concentrated time on robotics for two more weeks according to the people at home who are counting.

3. Say management of X property would rather you end your meetings at 7 but you usually end at 8 on weekdays. Say in six weeks you met 3 weekdays from 5-8 and you can push it up because school. That's 54 hrs of weekdays in 6 weeks. If you have 8 weeks with the same number of weekday meetings you would have 48hrs(89%) as opposed to just 36hrs (67%). Now you have less of a deficit to make up by adding meeting days or adding weekend time (by ~22%). If management of X property didn't care than it wouldn't affect you and would be a wash.

This probably makes sense to you, but it's just number salad to me. I can see where the 54 comes from, but no matter how I look at it, I can't find a way to get any of the other hours or percentages you list. Six weeks gives 54, but adding two more weeks "with the same number of weekday meetings" somehow gives six fewer hours? Where does the "as opposed to just 36hrs" come from?

The first sentence seems to say you aren't working within the property manager's preferences, so how is any of this relevant anyway? And what the heck does "push it up because school" mean?

Based on the changes you made to your first two arguments, I figure there's just something in your head that didn't quite make it out your fingers clearly enough for me to work with.

4. Similar to 2.2-3,

If a team meets more often than a student is able to show up they can be left behind or not be able to join. If meetings were less frequent but you still had just as many they would be able to attend a higher percentage of said meetings.

This would be true if the only reason a student can't attend is an absolute lack of hours in the week to spend on the team.

But if the problem is a conflict between the meeting times and either a job or some other extracurricular activities, simply cutting out some of those meetings isn't necessarily going to help. And if the problem is that the student just is not sufficiently committed to the team, spreading out the meetings won't change the situation.

You also ignore the fact that teams are already meeting after bag & tag day. For many teams, if you reduce the frequency of meetings during the first six weeks after kickoff, all you've done is reduce the total number of times they meet.