FIRST Acronyms

[kmcclary]

Originally Posted by A_Reed

a FIRST Standard Unit is the determined by the summation of all of the qualities of a Championship Chairmans team added together over the years(n= year)

Actually NO. The FSU (FIRST Standard Unit) is unit of TIME. It is a definition and reference to Dave Lavery's speech (AFAICD first given at the 2008 St. Louis Regional in Week One).

According to Dave: 1 FSU = 6-1/2 (Six and a Half) Weeks. (AKA "one FIRST Build Cycle worth of time".)

This was a part of Dave's commentary on how FIRST has seriously invaded and impacted NASA's way of doing business.

In essence, enough FIRST Alumni have started work at NASA to redefine how projects are done. Entire workgroups have appeared composed totally of FIRST alumni, so they took the initiative. They converted the project management culture into FSU blocks of time.

Amazingly, instead of projects taking quarters or years (as in the past), things are now organized and are getting done in one or more FSUs, because that's how they were trained to work by participating in FIRST contests.

It was a fascinating commentary on how this "little program" has managed to "complete the loop". Instead of just the sponsors impacting our methods, we are now impacting the SPONSORS' work culture.

(Dave, I hope I've summarized this correctly! Please feel free to fix my explanation.)

- Keith
Proud Sponsor of FRC 1502, "Technical Difficulties"