[FTC]: Work Hours

[jamie_1930]

Right now my team, 3750, is behind schedule and we think it is mainly due to our lack of hours that we've been spending working so my question to you is what is your teams normal work schedule?

Currently we've been working 2 hours Monday-Wednesday and 1 hour the rest of the school week. Does this seem adequate to you guys?

[Andrew Remmers]

Team 1902 FTC works on wednesday nights from 7-9ish then Saturdays from 1-5. We are just a little bit behind so we started something called Build-It-Days this week from 6:30-9 so we can finish creating all the non-kit components, wiring the robot and a few things that we needed to finish up with it. We have been very successful this week and are 85% complete with just one last thing to machine. Other than that the schedule has worked very well and we are happy with our design.

Hope this helps

Andrew

[qwertyuiop[]\]

So what i gather from your schedule is that you work about eight hours a week but that you spread them out evenly. Team 369 meets also meets eight hours a week. We meet on
Mon: 6PM-8 Wed: 2:15PM-5:00 and Sat 9AM-12.
We seem to be on track with our robots even though we dont get all team members every meeting. Consolidating meeting time is more efficient because you spend less time setting up and cleaning up. Also when working for extended periods of time you get into "the zone" and work more efficiently. It almost takes half an hour to get the meeting started. Maybe your team is more orderly and can get down to work faster but if not this is probably a cause for not being on track. Also my team, in the week before the competition, goes into "crunch mode" where we meet every day from 2-5:30 ish. I hope that this insight is of use to you.

[JesseK]

Tuesdays 2-8, Thursdays 2-5, Saturdays 7am - 10/11am. We're ahead of schedule compared to other years. Though this year the kids are being smarter and rather than trying only 1 prototype they're doing several, comparing lessons learned among the 4 teams, and doing all of the intricate sheet metal / lexan pieces out of cardboard for now.

[jamie_1930]

Originally Posted by qwertyuiop[]\

So what i gather from your schedule is that you work about eight hours a week but that you spread them out evenly. Team 369 meets also meets eight hours a week. We meet on
Mon: 6PM-8 Wed: 2:15PM-5:00 and Sat 9AM-12.
We seem to be on track with our robots even though we dont get all team members every meeting. Consolidating meeting time is more efficient because you spend less time setting up and cleaning up. Also when working for extended periods of time you get into "the zone" and work more efficiently. It almost takes half an hour to get the meeting started. Maybe your team is more orderly and can get down to work faster but if not this is probably a cause for not being on track. Also my team, in the week before the competition, goes into "crunch mode" where we meet every day from 2-5:30 ish. I hope that this insight is of use to you.

These are some of the things I've been thinking about, with FRC we always had long hours M-F 3PM-7PM and then Sa 9AM-3PM, and with FTC now the consensus was smaller bot, less work hours and this is clearly wrong. Also our team breaks down like this

- 5 solid people collaborating on design, build, and programming
- 2 people for fundraising
- 3 solid people who have been building a practice field
- 5 people who come and go and when they are there they're less than productive

In addition out of these people only three, including me, have ever been associated with FIRST so everything is pretty new to everyone. Another problem is that we have one teacher with the key to the cabinet with all of our stuff and today, as well as other days, he was not in school so programming was all that could be done. In the coming weeks we're hoping to increase work hours to 2PM-6PM also we should be working all of veterans day so hopefully we'll be getting more done soon.

[JohnFogarty]

Basically i have 10 people on my team we work tuesdays and thursdays 7-9 and saturdays 9-3 so we get it done.

[amarts]

I work with a junior high team so transportation is an issue. We meet right after school 3:30 to 6:30pm Mon, Tue, Thur, and the occasional Saturday or teacher inservice day for 8 or so hours those days. That is minimum 9 hours per week. We have been ok every year until this year we are behind. Not because of time, but lack of inventive ideas from the students and prototypes not working.

Andy

[Chris is me]

Disclaimer: I haven't built a whole Tetrix robot, was in FTC before that, but I think a lot of this team organization stuff still applies.

For my FV/TC team, we started out with your schedule, but then moved to a more concentrated schedule, more time in less days. We'd have 4 hour build sessions, as much shorter than that we'd spend too much time planning relative to building, and you could see more progress made on a daily basis, which was pretty motivating for all of us. It was best to exploit weekends (Late Saturday morning - Early Saturday afternoon sessions were the most productive) for full team meetings, then usually weekdays you came in if you had something specific to work on (the drivetrain team would build on Tuesdays, I'd work on the manipulator Wednesday afternoons, programmers worked Thursdays). They don't have to be separate days but it might be easier on schedules if you are.

This was much better for my team than meeting for 2 hour chunks twice a week, where it seemed like there was barely any time for anything to get done.

[Abra Cadabra IV]

We have a couple logistical issues with meeting, but we still manage to get in a good amount of time every week (6-8:30 Tuesday nights, 10-4 Saturdays), but it's a rare day when we have everybody present. We're behind schedule because of it, but I think we can catch up provided that we have a few extra meetings / send stuff home with people to work on during the week.