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• My presentation is called Super-simple Condensed Project Management for FRC Robotics Teams.

•Project Management is a system which uses specialized knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to ensure that a project achieves it’s objectives.

•Building a robot for a FIRST competition is a project. Projects have a start, they have an end, and they have a specific thing that has to be achieved. But each time you do a project, it’s different. The FRC competition changes every year.

•I’m going to talk about only the portions of project management that are specifically applicable to a FIRST Robotics Competition. I’ve chosen the portions of project management that are easy to do or really critical to having a successful team. •You’ll find this information useful because Project management is a standard business practice which is used in all businesses. We saw it being used to produce products at HNH Tools and at Special Electronics and Design. It’s being used to build the Davidson Centre addition. It’s being used to transport radioactive steam generators from Tiverton to Sweden for recycling.

•For more information on Project Management, google project management, or go to your local library, for some good books. [Display a copy of the Project

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About me …

•Mentor for Team 781, Kinetic Knights, in Kincardine Ontario

•Professional Engineer, P.Eng registered to practice in the province of Ontario •I graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a degree in chemical engineering. Although my degree is in chemical, but about half of my work has been in the mechanical area.

•I have a certificate in Quality Management from the University of Manitoba. •I have a certification from the Project Management Institute as a Project Management Professional, PMP

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Why would you want to use project management to prepare for a FRC competition? Because Project Management will help you

•get a working robot on the field at a competition •get everything done on time (or not miss activities) •get things done in the shortest amount of time It will help you

•to estimate your costs

•to communicate better within your team

•ensure your team has the knowledge and skills it needs to build a robot •to anticipate and prevent accidents

•help you convince your supporters, that the money and support they have given you was worthwhile

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Project management consists of a bunch of plans and I know you’re probably going to think “This is too much planning”..

But, build and competition is less than 4 months long. That’s not enough time if you need to recruit people, train them, fund-raise buy equipment and build a website as well as build and compete. We need to do as much as possible before build

season. There’s another 6 months in the school year when those things can be done.

There’s also time after the competition, to do what’s called “close the project”. Project closing activities, will help our team be even stronger next year.

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•Project management consists of writing a charter, and then planning the project management, activities, safety, costs, workers and communications.

•It isn’t complicated or difficult, it’s just a template of things you need to think about. Thinking about all these things in advance, will help our team to be successful. •Planning these things, will help us to do things right, the first time, and save time and effort. Planning also helps to ensure that nothing is forgotten.

•[CLICK] To apply for the apply for the Entrepreneurship Award, we need a Business Plan. A project management plan is most of the “filling” for a business plan. The only difference between a Project Plan and a Business Plan, is that a Business Plan addresses the history of the Team, and the team’s plans for the future after this project ends.

•Going to post some sheets, so we can start building a project plan.

Put planning sheets on wall. CHARTER

MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

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Formal projects start with a written document called the project charter. You may not need a written document, but your team needs to identify the following things that would normal be in a Project Charter.

1. GOALS Why are we building this robot?

-Is it because we want to win a regional competition and go to the Championships? Maybe our goal is to win one of the awards? Maybe you don’t care about winning, but you want to go on trips? Maybe you just want to have fun with your friends?

ASK – What is our team’s goal for this year? Write a few goals on posted page.

-ASK Why is it important to know what your goal is?

-So you know when you’ve accomplished the goals. Helps to promote team work and show stakeholders that you’ve been successful.

2. MILESTONES Milestone are when things have to be done -ASK Does anyone know what our milestones are?

3. ASSUMPTIONS AND CONSTRAINTS -You need access a place to build your robot

-You need money to register for competitions and travel

Things change, never assume you’ll have what you had last year. Identify the resources you’re depending on, and ask for them before you need them. Write on posted page.

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The term “stakeholders” means anyone who can influence the project’s success or failure.

Most projects have at least 4 groups of stakeholders (ADD STAKEHOLDERS SHEET TO PLANS) INTERNAL [WRITE ON SHEET]

1. Project Team Members - Team 781 Members 2. Project Manager - Sven and Janelle

3. Project Management – heads of supporting departments eg payroll, purchasing - Team 781 Mentors

4. Customer/User ASK –Who is the customer for your robot?

- Drive Team has to put robot on the field and compete. If the robot can’t do what they want it to do, or if they are not comfortable driving it, your team will not be successful.

- FIRST organization is your customer. They don’t want robots. They want you to become science and technology leaders. They want to know if they’re achieving their goal. They ask for that information in the Chairman’s Award.

EXTERNAL [WRITE ON SHEET]

Might consider FIRST an external stakeholder. 2 major groups:

1. Sponsors – The people that have given money, goods or services to your team 2. Influencers – Other groups who have influence or control over team.

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Formal projects have a written document that identifies how work gets done; usually in the form of an organization chart (This one is from Karthik’s 2007 presentation on running a FIRST team.) Write on Management Chart – organization chart

There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to organize your team. What’s important is that the team understands the organization and that the team works together to get the work done.

An organization chart helps to communicate who does what, and who makes decisions. For example: Write on chart

-Competitions decided by ? -$ decided by ?

-Strategy decided by?

-Parts and material decided by?

Knowing who has to approve things is really important, especially if they are people outside the project team.

Metrics are regular measurements that help you to know if you’re achieving your goal. For example •Money spent verses budget

•Number of activities still to be done before the robot ship date

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You probably don’t need a lot of metrics, but the chairman’s award criteria gives you some hints about the things FIRST wants you to measure:

• They want to know what you’ve done for the last three years. • They want measureable impacts; that means numbers How can we measure

-Impact on the us? % performance tend slide 7, number of graduates studying science and technology

-Impact on the school? $ spent buying equipment for shop

-Impact on community? $ raised for charity, hours effort donated tree planning

How can we demonstrate

-Learning experience? Lyle’s videos -Communications? List of events -Year round effort? (Ganntt Chart)

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Planning activities is the heart of project management.

You start with the list of milestones or deadlines. REVIEW – Where do you find the list of milestones?

Then you make a list of everything that needs to be done to meet those milestones. To be effective, your list must include:

WHAT is to be done WHEN it has to be done

WHO’s going to do it – If that person needs training to do the task, we put that on our worker plan

When you start your plan, the who is generic, like “the programming team will write code”. Later, the who becomes specific, like “Matt will write the code for the

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The very last thing you so is put the activities in the shortest sequence possible, that is do-able with your team. Some people do this by writing the activities on sticky notes, and then re-arranging them until they find a sequence that works.

•If you have a small team, planning the activities will be easy, but it’s going to take you a longer time to build the robot, because the activities must be done one after another; “in series”. For example, •if the same people are ordering parts, and building the chassis, and building the attachment and, doing the programming, those activities all have to be done in series, extending the time required to make your robot. ASK How much time for shown series activities? 8 weeks

[ENTER]

•If you have a large team, you can do things in a shorter time, by doing some activities in parallel. •If you have different people doing those things, you can get more things done at the same time. ASK suppose you order parts before the design is done and you get started building and

programming before the parts are here. How long? 5.5 weeks

When you plan your activities, you’ll probably identify things that need to be done that you forgot about. That’s OK! Just write them down and include them in your plan.

Don’t forget you need time to test and modify your robot. And your drivers need time to train. Be sure to include time in your plan for those activities.

You should also plan when you can’t work. For example, our team has exams in the middle of build season. We plan to NOT schedule work during exams.

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If you’re using project management software like Microsoft Project, OpenProject, or dotProject, you can enter all your activities into the software and display your project plan with a Gantt chart.

I’ve worked with Sven and Matt to layout a project plan for this build season.

HANDOUTbuild season sample Gantt Chart

-Take a good look at this sample Gantt Chart for build season

-The Receive Kit of Parts, Kickoff and Bag and Tag deadline to ship the robot are shown as diamonds – those are milestones

-Each activity that needs to be done is listed. WHAT

-WHEN each activity needs to start, is shown by the start of the bar. -WHEN each activity must be done is shown by the end of the bar. -WHO is assigned to do each activity is not yet shown, but will be!

-The arrows show an activity’s relation to other activities. For example, Task 10, Sven has to build the prototype chasis before Task 11, Cale can wire it.

-If we follow this plan, we will have a competition robot built by Feb 7 (Task 28), and the drivers will get 12 days to practice driving the robot (Task 45). That should give us lots of practice and time to fix any problems. A Gantt Chart is a good planning tool because it helps to

-ensure that no one is assigned to do two things at once. -communicate to the team all the activities that are taking place. -Determine the impact if an activity runs late

-It’s all shown on one page – and can be used to communicate to the judges all the work you’ve put into FIRST. ASK – What happens if you don’t have an activity plan for build season?

Prompt What happens if Sven spends 12 days preparing the final design? Everything delayed, lose driver training.

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You should plan your costs. A cost plan is usually called a “Budget“

HANDOUT BUDGET

You should plan your procurement. Procurement means buying, begging or borrowing! What you can’t beg or borrow, you’ll have to make or buy.

Look at task 20, order and receive additional parts. I’ve planned on 7 days for that. ASK - What happens if that takes 3 weeks?

Ordering parts, materials and services could introduce a significant delay to building the robot. The Society gave us money to order additional spare parts. Some were ordered last year. Sven and Pat have been working to source and get material here for next week.

Everyone you are buying from is a potential sponsor. When you ask for an estimate, ask for a donation , sponsorship or a discounted “academic” price. Some companies can’t afford to give you money, but they can give parts or old tools and equipment, or access to their facilities on the weekend to use their parts and equipment. For example, last year HNH Tools in London offered for us access to their inventory of spare parts.

Some of your fundraising activities might cost money. For example for advertisements in the paper, snacks for an open house. You need to include those activities on your activities plan, and expenses in your budget.

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A formal project usually includes a risk plan. The only risk that I am aware of for a FRC competition, is the risk that the robot will be lost or stolen. If there are risks that concern you, you should include activities to mitigate that risk. For example if you’re concerned about theft, you might include an activity for someone to

constantly be with the robot.

Another aspect of risk is safety. FIRST does a good job of setting out rules to keep the team and the robot safe. You also need rules to keep the team safe in the shop. There might be tasks and costs associated with following those rules, for example -Buying safety equipment for the team

-Making changes to the shop

Also, whenever you operate the robot outside of a FIRST designed arena, you need to ensure that the operating environment is safe for the team and the audience.

Do you have any safety activities planned for this year? Write on poster. Demonstrate how some safety items become activities, costs, worker plan.

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You need to plan your project workers.

•How are you going to attract new students to the team? •How are you going to use what they already know? •How you’re going to train them what they need to know?

•What’s going to happen when the experienced students graduate and leave the team? •How you’re going to show them that you appreciate their work?

You also have to consider that people are not robots! They need food and sleep, and they have to finish their school work and do well in exams.

These activities should be included on your plan. Any costs should be noted. For example •Attending training (like this)

•Purchasing Tshirts

•Scheduling parties and events

•Ordering food for when they’ve stayed at school late

ASK and write answers on poster.

Give me an example of how you recruit new team members. Give me an example of how you train team members. Give me an example of how you recognize team members. Does any team do succession planning?

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Remember the stakeholders? REVIEW What was the definition of a stakeholder?

Anyone who can influence the project’s success or failure.

Projects usually include a communication plan to make sure that the stakeholders have the information they need.

Lets start with the internal stakeholders. Review internal stakeholders from poster.

How do your internal stakeholders know what’s going on with your project? Does your team need regular reports?

Does your team need regular meetings? Do they need to know the status of activities? Do they need to know the outcome of decisions?

Do they need things written down so they can go back to them later. This slide shows a wiki which our team has set-up to document information for our team.

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Internal communication is something this team is struggling with. Samples of internal communication

•Bills blog usfirst.org > FRC > FRC Blog

•Team 781 group on Facebook (both external and internal communications) •Janelle’s emails

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External communications typical is referred to as Public Relations or Media Relations.

The first thing to do, is to figure out what each external stakeholder cares about. For example •What does FIRST care about?

•What does Bruce Power care about? •What does your school board care about? •What do your parents care about?

Different stakeholders care about different things. For each stakeholder, you need to … communicate different information.

figure out when to communicate. figure out how to communicate.

ASK – Is your website written for your internal stakeholders or your external stakeholders? Are your external stakeholders reading your website?

ASK for some example communications. Write on poster.

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BTW note how the tshirt colour stands out, and the team number and canadian flag are frequently visible. Excellent tshirt design.

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You’re going to do better, just by going through the exercise of planning your goals, team organization, budget, activities, workers and communication.

Writing the project plan isn’t an onerous task. A couple of pages and three appendices (organization chart, Ganntt chart, budget) and you’re done. It’s a professional, concise summary of the team’s effort for the judges. It’s a guide for next year’s team.

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After all that planning, you’re off! It’s build season and it’s time to Work The Plan! The Project Manager is the person that coordinates all the planned activities.

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After Kickoff, Sven’s going to ask everyone to go home and read the rules thoroughly.

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The Project Manager

-Directs all the activities making sure that people know what they are supposed to be doing, and when they are supposed to do it.

-For example, when parts come in, the project manager

-makes sure that the parts are delivered to the build person -ensures that the build person checks the parts are correct -Ensures that the finance person to pay for the parts. -Lots of coordination.

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-Makes checks up on activities in progress, and checks that they get done before they are supposed to be done

-ASK - How do they do this?

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When activities don’t, or can’t get done on time, the Project Manager reschedules the tasks and the workers to still meet the milestones.

This picture shows a white board, being used to communicate to the team the WHAT WHEN WHO of the next tasks that need to be done.

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The Project Manager is the glue that holds the team together. The principle means of communication within the team, is usually by the Project Manager walking around and talking to people.

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Our project plan should continue into competition season. During competition season, there are lots of activities to plan, monitor, coordinate and communicate. These activities usually have specific deadlines which cannot be extended, and critical safety aspects. For example

ASK – What activities do you have for competition season?

-Move the robot and the tools (arrange use of Bruce Power van) - Ship the robot to Cleveland

-Book busses and hotels

-Implement game strategy

-Note

-Your drive team has to communicate their strategy to their alliance teams, and negotiate any changes to that strategy.

- Your alliance teams can affect the success or failure of your project. What are they? Stakeholders!

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When you’re finally done, it’s time for a party to celebrate your successes. But the project isn’t done yet!

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Last step is to close the project. Closing the project is the opportunity to pass on what you’ve learned to next year’s team. In other words, it’s a form of mentoring, and we know that FIRST is big on mentoring.

REVIEW CHARTER

•Did you achieve your goals? If something had been done differently, could they have been achieved?

REVIEW ACTIVITIES

•Did you meet all the milestones? Did you miss any activities? Did any activities run late?

REVIEW COSTS

•Were there any unexpected costs? Is there a way to save money next year? REVIEW COMMUNICATIONS

•Did you team know what was going on?

•Are your stakeholders happy and wanting to support you. REVIEW WORKERS

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That’s the essentials of project management for FRC robotics teams. Project management isn’t complicated, it’s just a template to think through ahead of time. Planning things in advance and then working the plan will make your team

Figure

figure out when to communicate.

References

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