Time Management & Documentation in Notebooks

VEX IQ General Discussion
1

Hello everyone,

Recently I’ve been researching various techniques and elements to add to egineering notebooks. An element that consistently came up was time management. I have never done this in the past nor even thought of this (my fault), so I’m not sure where to start.
Could any of you please share tips on using calendars, timelines, and Gantt charts?

A few questions that I’d really like answered:

  1. Where should you put these elements? (Like beginning of the notebook, end, every month, etc.)
  2. How should you format it?
  3. What types of elements are the best (i.e. calendars, timelines, Gantt charts, etc.)?
  4. Any other suggestions?

Also, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could attach some examples from your notebook. It’d be splendid to see how teams are doing it themselves.

Thank you so much

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2

I put time manegement on every section of my motebook once we start a new robot

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3

Hey there!

  1. Really, you can place these elements wherever you want. I’d say it depends on the documentation style of your notebook. For a tab notebook, you can consider having these elements closer to the beginning of your notebook. For chronological, document them in the order they were made along side other aspects of notekeeping.
  2. Calendars and Gantt charts are very easy to format. Gantt charts, at their most basic form, just consist of a list of tasks on the y axis and time on the x axis.

If you still need an example, here’s an example of a relatively basic Gantt chart for a single month.

Dark Purple and Grey Lined Project Gantt Chart (2)
Dark Purple and Grey Lined Project Gantt Chart (2)1024×768 27.7 KB

The numbers are the weeks of the month (and I apologize for the terrible cropping lol).

You could also make something slightly more complicated by separating tasks into smaller tasks.

Dark Purple and Grey Lined Project Gantt Chart (3)
Dark Purple and Grey Lined Project Gantt Chart (3)1024×768 26.9 KB

I admit I’m actually not super well-versed in those types of Gantt charts, so the 2nd example might be wrong, but from what I know it’s correct.

(Both examples are made in Canva, by the way).

What I do is make a season-long Gantt chart, supplemented by monthly Gantt charts.

  1. Gantt charts, calendars, SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) Analysis, and much more. Remember there’s not just time management, but resource management in general (like your budget). I recommend checking out non-Vex videos on that topic.

  2. Make sure what you do is helpful to your team and allows the judges to understand your team deeper.

A lot more that I could talk about. I recommend checking old notebook posts on the forum to get other people’s opinions.

Anyway, hope this helps. If you have any more questions, LMK.

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