paper: Stop the Stop Build

[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.