paper: Stop the Stop Build

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by chapman1

Our team has only a handful of mentors, and all are actively employed. Some have to take vacation time in order to attend after-school work sessions or to participate in weekday events.

Wouldn't extending build season to include several more weekends be to your benefit? I won't pretend to know how your team operates, but I can tell you about our experience last season. Virtually all of our mentors work in the Silicon Valley tech industry, have to commute to the school for robotics, and a growing number of us are starting families - we know all about the time commitments that mentors face.

After years of 7 day weeks and long nights, 254 finally switched to a time-boxed* evening and weekend schedule last season, and as far as I'm concerned there's no turning back. It gives students time to do homework, mentors days off to work and be with family, and everyone the precious sleep they need. When we made this switch, we realized how ~40% of the time we were spending at build while exhausted and frustrated was wasted, and that a more spread-out schedule allows everyone to catch their breath, parts to arrive, and work sessions to be more focused.

Things were a lot better this season, but there's still room for improvement.

* the final week before competition is always an exception...

Originally Posted by chapman1

Further, when the competition season finally ends, we have to spend the next several months catching up with our personal and professional lives. Extending the build season would make it nearly impossible for us to ever catch up.

I've participated in FRC for more than half my life on a couple of teams, as a student and as a mentor. The years where I was most disciplined about how much time I spent through the season were the most rewarding for me, for the students, and were reflected in the on- and off-field successes of the team. I know it's easy to get pot committed and suddenly end up in your build space every afternoon, but you gotta stay disciplined. It's a lot more sustainable to not fall behind than it is to have to play catch up. Many of the restrictions of stop-build day make this harder than it needs to be.

Since you've pretty well established that you are near the "5" end of the survey spectrum, I was wondering: What do you think of the proposal that all teams receive a limited (~4-6 hour) unbagging window during each week of the competition season?

[Mark McLeod]

The argument that every team should be like 254 is weak...
Hubris is blinding.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

The argument that every team should be like 254 is weak...
Hubris is blinding.

The conscious decision to restrict your own build schedule and to practice discipline with meeting times is advice that works for all levels of teams. 2791 started doing this in 2013, just as they became a consistently competitive team, and it has been a huge benefit for the team and all of its members.

I agree with your point in general, that often teams don't have a good picture of other team's situations when giving advice, but I genuinely think reducing meeting times and being strategic about it is actually in the long term a competitive advantage and a great piece of advice for all levels. Team member burnout is a constraint and resource to manage, just like any other.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I agree with your point in general, that often teams don't have a good picture of other team's situations when giving advice, but I genuinely think reducing meeting times and being strategic about it is actually in the long term a competitive advantage and a great piece of advice for all levels. Team member burnout is a constraint and resource to manage, just like any other.

The hubris is making the assumption that other teams haven't already thought of and dealt with this. Every team has already decided how they are going to schedule their meeting times.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

The hubris is making the assumption that other teams haven't already thought of and dealt with this. Every team has already decided how they are going to schedule their meeting times.

I have to disagree that every team has dealt with this. We've been doing yearly FRC workshops in NC for a while now. One of the perennial topics among mentors is always build season schedules. There are a lot of teams that want to optimize what they are doing in this area and it is a continuing area of interest. I'm not going to say what Jared has laid out above for 254 is the perfect example or that it works for everyone but the topic is relevant for a large number of teams and it seems like there are a lot that haven't figured it out yet based on the discussions that I've heard yearly now for the past 5 or 6 years.

Somewhat related, we're cutting back our hours this year as well due to burnout and exhaustion. It's not a huge cut but it will give the students and mentors some of their weekend hours back.

[jman4747]

So it seems one disagreement we have lies with the question of whether or not meeting more often over a short period of time is more stressful than meeting less often over a longer period of time.

I would assume most people who want to keep the bag beleve the latter is more stressful?

[D.Allred]

Originally Posted by jman4747

So it seems one disagreement we have lies with the question of whether or not meeting more often over a short period of time is more stressful than meeting less often over a longer period of time.

I would assume most people who want to keep the bag beleve the latter is more stressful?

I've seen a lot more concerns around the following points.
- More time available will drive more time to meet increasing total commitment.
- Open build allows all teams to continue iterating. You will need to do the same to remain competitive.
- Open build will provide more opportunities for design convergence.

Either way you look at it, FRC is a huge time commitment. Change is never easy. Fear of the unknown is common.

I've reflected on this debate and how it would impact me. Commitment to this program is a personal decision. In my case, it would probably drive some extra meeting time to iterate. But oddly, I believe it would reduce my stress. I'd rather spend my time improving, repairing, and practicing with one robot than trying to maintain two.

David

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by D.Allred

I've seen a lot more concerns around the following points.
- More time available will drive more time to meet increasing total commitment.
- Open build allows all teams to continue iterating. You will need to do the same to remain competitive.
- Open build will provide more opportunities for design convergence.

And that's about what I was thinking but I tend to consider the above three to be non-issues in the grand scheme of things.

Edit: And good point at the end. I wonder how many more people in a similar situation would be saved the stress.

1 - More time available will drive more time to meet increasing total commitment.

This can be solved by simply committing to a set amount of involvement before the season and sticking to it, which a lot of us do already. It's a problem created or subverted by personal choice and that won't change without the bag.

2 - Open build allows all teams to continue iterating. You will need to do the same to remain competitive.

Great! More time for learning with the robot.

And if you don't want that...

You could decide that whatever level you can obtain by meeting on a bag&tag like schedule is good enough for you. I know that doesn't sound great but people often debate the overall importance of on field performance, and any given team can decide that for themselves. You can also back load your build meetings to see what is working and what isn't before you start finalizing things.

3- Open build will provide more opportunities for design convergence.

I don't see a major problem with this in the first place even if it turned out to be common, and it wouldn't be common. There are few teams that can competently pull off major copies of robots. They would need to be very well organized and disciplined to basically start their whole process in week 5 or later just to build a verbatim copy of another robot. They would probably end up with just as good a robot if they came up with their own ideas.

The other scenario that a team would pull a complete remake ignores the fact that a team capable of such a feat would probably not need to copy anyone.

Any more minor design convergence seems either unimportant and virtually unavoidable anyway. There are only so many effective ways to accomplish a given task in FRC with the current hardware constraints. Most teams are going to be more concerned with doing what they are most comfortable with rather than attempting to copy someone.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

The argument that every team should be like 254 is weak...

Where did I make this argument? I do not think this, and did not say this.

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Every team has already decided how they are going to schedule their meeting times.

Of course every team has a schedule, and has presumably put considerable thought into it...thought that all assumes a six-week open-access build season because that is the system we currently have. Changing this underlying assumption permits some (not all) teams to find new solutions and make new trade offs between what they put into and get out of the program.

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Hubris is blinding.

I expected neither "Have-you-tried-not-making-mentors-burn-out" nor "I-find-it's-preferable-not-to-burn-out-if-you-can-help-it" to be particularly novel ideas that this team had never thought of. Rather, I had hoped to foster a reply to understand why these might not be on the table, even with an extended build season. I want to better understand differing viewpoints on this and (in particular) what attitudes would be towards some sort of middle ground.

[Mark Sheridan]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

After years of 7 day weeks and long nights, 254 finally switched to a time-boxed* evening and weekend schedule last season, and as far as I'm concerned there's no turning back. It gives students time to do homework, mentors days off to work and be with family, and everyone the precious sleep they need. When we made this switch, we realized how ~40% of the time we were spending at build while exhausted and frustrated was wasted, and that a more spread-out schedule allows everyone to catch their breath, parts to arrive, and work sessions to be more focused

We are inspired to do this after conversations with you guys and 1678. We were so burnt out by week 4. We started making a lot of mistakes in the final 2 weeks that really hurt our season. We made a prototype drivetrain in 2 days early in season but after getting burnt out it took us over 5 days to finish the competition drivetrain. Getting feedback from you guys during the season was really helpful to for us to see our schedule was not the best for our students. some students had a tough time keeping up with school.

After doing this for the past 4 years, Code Orange has done the "7 days a week." We are moving to 4 days a week too. We think this will help our students have more time to stay focused on school and keep the meetings more fun.

I noticed a lot of top teams are making this switch.