Potential Workflow Strategy

By Lucy C.

What would a productive workflow look like? Imagine being able to coordinate your projects, establish clear goals, and regularly assess your progress with the guidance of tangible deadlines. These are all goals CAOS Robotics hopes to accomplish in the future. That is why we are considering implementing a new workflow methodology in the future.

Past Methodologies

In the past, we have mainly utilized an agile approach for our project management; this is an approach centered around breaking down tasks so that it can be easier to regularly assess progress and adapt plans. This has been effectively implemented in the design of our odometry for the Picky Eater.

While this management technique has helped us design the software of a robot that made it to FTC’s Regionals, we did notice that throughout the year, our team sometimes lacked structure and direction when it came to planning and completing projects. More specifically, we noticed that the lack of concrete deadlines in our management lessened the sustainability of our workflow. As our team captain wrote himself, “We need to be able to delegate [roles] while also keeping people under deadlines. What I saw this year is we assigned projects and they kind of fell through.”

We do still believe that our previous workflow was effective in some ways: it was adaptive and dynamic. It was useful for software development.

However, as a part of the FIRST community, we understand how important it is to employ direction and discipline in the way we work. This is why we are considering a new workflow approach.

Our Potential Workflow Methodology

Developed by Lucy, this model is essentially a fusion of the Adaptive Project Methodology (a type of agile methodology) and the more traditional Critical Chain Methodology.

The above methodology has all the fundamental steps of Agile’s adaptive plan methodology: plan project, plan cycle, initiate tasks, self-assess and/or receive feedback, and complete the project. Like the agile methodology, this workflow method prompts users to break project goals into basic but adaptable steps, and allows users to modify project goals and plans based on feedback and self-assessment.

A drawing outlining the adaptive project methodology.

Despite its lack of fixed structure, CAOS Robotics enjoys how flexible and assessment-driven this agile approach is. This is why our potential workflow contains all of its basic steps.

However, considering our previous struggles with setting deadlines and getting things done quickly, we understand our previous project management strategy by itself can end up being directionless. That is why this new methodology was designed to increase structure and discipline in our workflow—each of the basic steps in the adaptive project methodology was broken down and guided by the principles of the Critical Chain Methodology: identify critical path, identify resource constraints, arrange due dates, and plan and initiate tasks based on the critical path, due dates, and resources you set up.

The emphasis on the critical path is arguably the most important aspect of this new method; a critical path is essentially a series of important, codependent tasks that need to be completed in order for the project to be successful. This series of tasks is considered to take longer to complete, which is why we would need to plan them carefully and prioritize them more.

By disciplining ourselves to establish a critical path, we hope to be able to accomplish our goal of arranging deadlines and planning projects strategically.

A drawing outlining the critical chain methodology.

Being a traditional methodology, the Critical Chain methodology in itself is fairly linear and somewhat rigid for our workload, but the structure and time management strategies employed in this methodology can be useful.

What will happen now?

Of course, we still have yet to further test and modify this methodology for our own purposes. The diagram of the workflow methodology is merely an outline of what may (or may not) be used in the future.

We do understand that if this methodology works, it will be immensely beneficial, especially when it comes to planning larger projects: it emphasizes clear deadlines and strategic planning while still preserving the adaptability and feedback-driven approach of our previous workflow. However, we understand that like robotics and engineering, project management involves testing and retesting. We still have yet to decide if we will use this methodology, and to what extent.

By analyzing our work habits and finding possible ways to help our team boost its productivity and improve its discipline, we endeavor to use drafts and articles like this one to reflect on ways to better ourselves as a robotics team.