Does anyone have a team schedule, Gantt chart, or season timeline that you could share?? I’m just looking for ideas on how to have realistic deadlines for a team. It would be great to have something to post in the robotics room so everyone would be able to easily see it. Thanks!
Some teams scan their notebook after the season is over, and share them online in PDF form. I think I once saw one with a Gantt chart in it. I might be able to find it again…
You could take a look at past world championships excellence award winner notebooks (that recf scans and uploads) to see teams’ timelines.
(e.g. 1575a, who had a gantt chart at the start of their notebook on page 18 during the nothing but net season.)
*Note I’m assuming a normal team goes to around 3 qualifiers and possibly a regional championship. This will vary greatly.
This is super schedule dependent based on your region, but from my past experiences the best way to pace your team is to set an overall skills score goal. By your first tournament you want to have met about 50% of that goal and your mechanisms need to be completed to see if you need a redesign. By tournament number two you need to be closer to 75% of the goal. By your last qualifier and regional your team needs to be as close to your goal as possible. A few key points to this type of schedule.
- Programming is arguably the most neglected aspect of VEX yet the most important part of the competition. As an example of this my team two years ago did a “build it there self challenge” where they built a robot on sight taking the basics of two other bots they had there. The other two bots went undefeated throughout the day but the one that had 0 programming tweaks finished around .500.
- Don’t be “stuck” on the first robot you design. If the top level increases or if you feel like it can be better by all means change the design, BUT (unless you have tremendous experience/dedication) NEVER not finish a robot at least 2 build weeks before an event. Driving practice and programming work on a decent bot will almost always out-due a robot that is finished the week before an event.
- Set more unrealistic goals and push hard early in the year. That way your team’s grasp of what they can accomplish and the game itself will be easier to handle throughout the year.
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We go to between 4 and 8 qualifiers each season, then up to three championships (State, US Open, Worlds). Last year we chose our competitions based on who’s tournaments we wanted to attend. This year we chose the weekends we wanted to compete, with better spacing for rebuilds.