How many days do your programmers get with a fully built robot before stop build day?

[JonKiddy]

Hello. I'm the lead programming mentor for Team 4930 and I'm looking for some advice. Our team isn't using any formal methodology/model for programming but I'd like to introduce students to Agile/Waterfal/Scrum/etc. However, after thinking about it some more I've realized that none of those may work due to how our team builds the robot.

We have a design team that CADs the robot, a mechanical team that puts it together, an electrical team that wires it up, and then the programming team does it's thing. Well, in reality it isn't that simple, usually the programming team gets the robot on the last Saturday before stop build day and it becomes a "get it working!!" day, rather then a real workflow. Most of that day ends up being an electrical/mechanical QA session. Then a rush to deliver a programmed robot after QA. After stop build day more programming sessions occur without a robot until our first competition. This is when the majority of the programming happens, but I'd rather be testing our code on a robot before we see if it works at competition.

I'm guessing this is normal? How much time does your programming team have with a fully built robot before stop build day?