Phases of First

Systems Engineering looks at the total lifecycle of a project or product. Starting from the conceptual design to production to ending the project. A Systems Engineering point of view is looking at the big picture. If you look at FIRST Website there is a good planning worksheet that divides the season into pre-season, in-season, regionals and championship competitions, and finally post-season. The FIRST Robotics lifecycle (season) could be broken up into five distinct phases with more discriptive terms.

How do the systems interact with each phase is important. Recall that the systems are:

Safety

Team

Archive

Robot

Outreach

Financial

Clicking on each phase will describe the phase and how it relates to the FIRST Planning sheet. Then it will discuss tasks that should be worked within each of the systems.

One of the implied goals of FIRST is creating leaders for our future. For each phase, your team should have leadership opportunities for your members. Look at the organizational structure and make sure that it will give these opportunites for the members. Supply the opportunities, and watch the leadership skills of your members grow