Regarding Project Management & Planning

[Dinesh Sutar]

Dear Team

                    I hope you guys are gearing up for Robocon 2016 my best wishes are with you. The year since we started Robocon in SRM we have always tried our best to be among top teams in India and we have achieved it to a good extent.
I think we can bring it up to another level by adopting some Project Management and Planning techniques that are used by industries.

We have improved technically in these years and still we do. Reduction in Fabrication time, using new technology, better programming etc.

Here are some obstruction which me as part of team from 2011-2014 have experienced and heard of happening in 2015.

Robocon projects starts from 3rd week of August and ends on 1st week of March next year, do we know that what activity Person X has to do on...for ex. on 10 Oct 2015 or on 15 Jan 2016 we won't have an perfect idea but we can give a rough idea or we say it depends on situation.

We have always faced shortage in finance, but do we know that what will be our expenditure for the month of January.

Some times we were unable to prepare our robots on time, lack of practice and failure in integration though we are experienced and hardworking.

Have we identified our short term risks, long term risks, our stakeholders (someone who affects or gets affected by project) or have we avoided cost over run (a particular stuff demands more investment than expected in a particular time period).

We have a 25 member team working an avg. of 5 hours for 150 days = 18750  man/hours or 781 Man/Days and aprrox 6 to 10 lacs budget which is a vast resource.

The above mentioned instances can be solved by CPA/PERT analysis, Scheduling, Forecast, Role management, Risk analysis, Effect of stakeholders, cost control and Resource management, Time period management of PDCA cycle, having a progressive elaboration (PEST).

Such things can be managed by a Software called "PRIMEVERA P6 EPPM" as i got a new job as Estimation and Planning Engineer in a company DELTA CONSTRUCTION CO WLL at Kingdom of Bahrain.

I hope i can help you guys setting up a Project Management & Planning foundation, If you require. Please comment on the things i have elaborated and your point of view on it.

Regards

Dinesh Sutar
  

[Satyabrata Satapathy]

This is an brilliant idea by Dinesh. As I am in to team management right now. I could understand how useful will be to achieve your goal in future.
Though you guys are working in a vibrant product development type environment. There are certain things which are always predictable. I am there to help you. Kindly reach out to us for help.

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[Anandhavel Nagendra]

Excellent suggestion, Dinesh! On the coding and electrical side. I recommend the following things. I do not know if you are already following some of these practices.

1) GitHub: An online repository for coding. When multiple people contribute to 1 code, github is the best way to collaborate. Not only does it backup your code, your github profile can be shared with companies, so they can see how well you code, how often you commit to the repositories, etc.

2) Electrical Testing: Run the same test conditions (same code, environment, path, etc) multiple times and note the amount of voltage/power/current consumed, starting battery voltage, ending battery voltage, etc. You must have consistent data, or it means something is not working correctly. This is the basis of reliability.You can also project the observations to find how much battery power and voltage ranges you need for optimum performance.

Thanks and Regards,

Anandhavel Nagendrakumar