Sunday, June 28, 2015

Bryan LS1

  • Intro: The Lean Startup is a book about 21st century management.  How does building a FRC robot and running a FRC team run into the same challenges Eric Ries identified in modern businesses?  How is our FRC team a group of entrepreneurs?

Well, challenges are inevitable. At anytime, you could run into a challenge, such as not being able to agree on something, or simply not knowing what to do next. Building an FRC robot and running an FRC team have many challenges and problems. They always will have challenges and problems mostly because not everyone is the same exact person. Everyone has different views on what should be done and they all solve it in different ways, whether it be efficient or atheistic. Both areas have their own challenges like Eric Ries identified. No one can agree. Plain and simple not everyone can agree and people also need to be more open minded to take in ideas and then become able to mesh ideas and work finally starts getting done.

Our FRC team is a group of entrepreneurs due to how we have to become seen by the public eye and make our own ideas that will be able to be agreed on to make something. We are our own business. We made our team which requires money and resources just like a business.


  • Chapter 1: What is productivity?  When building a FRC robot, what specifically is productivity?  Based on this definition, was our team productive during the last build season?

Productivity is something our team doesn't know much about. Well that is true to an extent, we know when to buckle down and get to work, but we don't always do it well. Productivity is basically how productive you/your team can be. When building an FRC robot, productivity is how well the team is working together to be able to build the robot and how well they communicate. And no. Our team was not productive for the most part.

  • Chapter 2: What did IMVU assume to be true when they designed their product?  How did customers actually behave?  Was there a faster and cheaper way to learn the lesson they learned?

They thought that the people that used their product wanted to use instant messaging systems that weren't made by IMVU. Customers wanted an IM system that was in the specific game so that when people got onto that game, they could have new, different, online friends instead of the school and work friends. A faster, more efficient and cheaper way for them to find out these stats would be to test it with only a small amount of people and then if they didn't like it then they could've changed it.

  • Chapter 3: What is something that we were unsure of last build season that we experimentally validated?  Was there a faster way to learn what we learned?
We experimented with the ramp to figure out how we could've gotten it to work or if it would've worked at all. We could've had different groups try different things instead of one group doing one thing at a time. Also, we should've worked on better prototypes.

  • Chapter 4: Choose the Zappos, HP, Kodak, or Proctor & Gamble case study.  What assumptions did the Zappos founders make when they started their business?  How did they test their assumptions more efficiently than the IMVU team?

Well Zappos was wise and saw and asked if there was a problem first instead of making a solution for a problem that didn't exist. The Zappos founders were wiser than the IMVU team because of their decision to figure out the problem and then fix it. Also, it was with a small amount of people that they figured out the problem rather than just a whole bunch of consumers.

Overall, I learned that not only I, but the team should figure out the problem before making a solution. Also, we need to work together and not always make a large scale thing right away. We need to start small rather than charging right into the final thing.

7 comments:

  1. I find it interesting that you claim we were not productive. While I agree that there is a large opportunity for improvement, if you measure productiveness based upon the success of the team, I think we can consider ourselves very productive.

    I like your comment about the ramp development -- we did spend a considerable amount of time trying to get a rear loading ramp, but it never did work out.

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  2. If you base our productiveness on how well we communicated and handled teamwork, I can see how we could be considered unproductive, but, in my opinion, that is not all that productivity consists of. Productivity must also include the end product which was a good robot, a relationship with Mcneilus steel, and lots of useful information for next year.

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    1. First off, I would like to admit that at times I was not productive, but even with the end product involved with the concept of productivity, we still missed many things that could've helped us not only in the short run, but also in the long run. For example, we could've worked on the Best Buy grant which not only would've gotten us money, but would've gotten us recognized. Also, we could've worked harder on the chairman's video as well as the presentation. I know that this was a time crunch for when it was worked on, but we had plenty of time during the season to work on it (Shout out to Braxton for a lot of work done on chairman's). The amount of examples are just a few of many. Although I disagree with your opinion of how productive we were, I do agree that we did have a good robot, a relationship with Mcneilus steel and information for next year, but there is so much more we could've done.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. FYI the deleted comment was a duplicate of the first one. Carry on, pay no attention to this one.

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  3. If you base our productiveness on how well we communicated and handled teamwork, I can see how we could be considered unproductive, but, in my opinion, that is not all that productivity consists of. Productivity must also include the end product which was a good robot, a relationship with Mcneilus steel, and lots of useful information for next year.

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you base our productiveness on how well we communicated and handled teamwork, I can see how we could be considered unproductive, but, in my opinion, that is not all that productivity consists of. Productivity must also include the end product which was a good robot, a relationship with Mcneilus steel, and lots of useful information for next year.

    ReplyDelete