What Happens When Dean's Homework Assignments Work?

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Ok, I was curious if we as a community had any standard definition of success. Would there be any benefit in developing one?

Well, let's think about 3 scenarios:

1. A team driven to set ambitious goals to be on a winning alliance at a regional and to win at least one other award within a certain time frame. The plan is when that is achieved then they move their goals towards being on two or more winning alliances because they are planning on attending 2 or more competitions. And they focus on bringing home the RCA and the WFFA. Then they move their goals to achieve winning multiple Chairmans at regional level and focus on winning the CCA - the Championship Chairman's. They also focus on winning the WFA. This team plots out their goals on a timeline, and strategy is a big part of how they go about achieving these goals over a set number of years.

2. A team is under the leadership of a teacher who views the FRC build season and competition as an opportunity for the students to learn and to better prepare themselves for their futures. If the team garners any awards or is a part of a winning alliance at any of the competitions, then the team feels that it has surpassed its goals.

3. Then you have a team who consistently receives the kit of parts a couple of weeks after teams on the mainland do and has to get it built in the same timeframe as everyone else does. This team has to meet financial demands for the team to be able to travel long distances to any competitions outside of its country, state, or region, including the occasional trip to the Championship. If the robot is built in time for shipping, it is a good thing. If the team is consistently set financially, that is an even better thing.

These are 3 scenarios and 3 approaches to competing in an FRC season. These are hypothetical teams but reflect some of the approaches and challenges that teams may have. And there are many many more, including combinations of these. So how do we set a standard definition of success?

Another thought - sustainability. Concerns are and have been consistently made here in CD regarding the fast growth of FRC teams. There is also concern regarding the sustainability of veteran teams and the new teams that are growing in areas where the resources have not made themselves readily available or even identifiable. This is the current concern. It's possible that in a few years, this will not be a concern or a primary concern in FRC because the FIRST community will have worked to strengthen this weakness in the program and in the local communities and regions that the teams are a part of. But - there will be new concerns. We don't know what they are now because we aren't there yet, but there is always another layer of the onion that reveals itself when one layer is removed.

So - one way to look at a FIRST team as a successful team at the moment, is to view them from a sustainability perspective. Does that mean they have the best shop or the best closet to build out of? Does that mean their team shirts are donated by a sponsor or that they are made by the team? Does that mean that everyone brings a brown bag for snacks or that the team is catered by another generous sponsor during build? My thinking is that the team that holds together, gets itself organized, builds a robot that follows the guidelines and rules laid out for the current season, and has worked to the best of its ability in the areas of the robot competition and any other award areas that it could work in, all the while meeting financial demands - is working towards being self-sustaining and is achieving success. When that becomes consistent and stabilizes - then the team can seriously begin to focus on winning awards, garnering achievements, building their reputation, creating that wow factor that we all admire so much in the greats. Then we're made of win. All of us who worked together to find ways to help teams reach levels of sustainability that are consistent. And that's when the vision that our FIRST founder can become realistic and attainable. I'm not ever sure that a vision is logical so I may never be able to answer that one, but I do know that it is fed by passion, desire, and a can-do commitment.

[Chris Fultz]

How do we help existing teams become sustainable?

How can we help teams be prepared to cope with disaster?

There are lots of ways to help, here is one.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/download/2488

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/download/2489

Here are two papers that offer some ideas on this. One is a white paper that is a business plan and team continuity plan. The other is a PowerPoint of a presentation given at the 2009 CHP.

Continuity Plans are common in big businesses and usually focus on big events and how the business will deal with them. These plans might include weather issues (hurricane, tornado, flood), attacks, impairment of key leaders. They might also include items like loss of a computer network, corruption of data, or failure of a major supplier or customer. Companies then put together plans to address the issues that can be addressed. This might include giving everyone a laptop so they could work at home, having a backup computer system in another location, restrictions on how many executives can fly together, having a big line of credit at the bank, etc. All are meant to allow the business to sustain itself if some sort of major event happens.

For a FIRST team, the same process can be put in place. Teams can consider the issues that put them at risk. This might be loss of a key mentor, loss of a key sponsor, loss of their school, some socially unacceptable event that occurs that threatens the stability of the team, etc. I can name several teams that have faced these occurrences in the past 2 years.

The next step is to identify the likelihood and impact of some of these bad things happening. Some might be unlikely, some might be very likely. Some may have no real impact, others could have a huge impact. Then, the team can identify what actions can be taken to either minimize the likelihood or reduce the impact of the top items. Sometimes, there is really no action the team can take and they just have to assume the risk.

The final steps are then to put the plans in place, and to comtinually review the issues and risks.

We did this last year and modeled our process after a corporate template from one of the team mentors.

This activity takes time and effort, and can be a challenge for teams because it has nothing to do with building a robot. It is a different type of activity. And, most of us don't like to think about what can go wrong.

Some of the risks we identified included:

Loss of a key mentor (has happened)
Loss of our school build space (at risk every new year)
Loss of a major sponsor (always a potential)
Loss of all major sponsors (lower risk, but disasterous)
Loss of our teacher leader (has happened twice)
Major injury in our machine shop (not gonna say)

We did this last fall, but we need to repeat it this fall and be sure we are current and have identified any new concerns. A continuity plan is a "living document".