Wylie East Qualifier Postmortem

By Ethan, Kenna, Janavi, Karina, Evan, Abhi, and Charlotte

Task: Analyze our successes and failures in the Wylie East Competition

We have a new format for our postmortems. We start by asking a series of questions to figure out our problems, and we cover 4 catagories to do so.

STRENGTHS

• What are our strengths?
• What do we do better than other teams?
• What unique capabilities and resources do we possess?
• What do others perceive as our strengths?

WEAKNESSES

• What are our weaknesses?
• What do other teams do better than us?
• What can we improve given the current situation?
• What do others perceive as our weaknesses?

OPPORTUNITIES

• What trends or conditions may positively impact us?
• What opportunities are available to us?

THREATS

• What trends or conditions may negatively impact us?
• What are other teams doing that may impact us?
• What impact do our weaknesses have on the threats to us?

Preparation

Strengths
This time, we prepped our engineering journal a good while beforehand, which was good. Last time, we spent the last night panicking over how our journal wasn't finished and dealing with a printer that craps out every other page. We also became more productive as the tournament drew closer, but this can also be a drawback as we need to be *consistent*.

Weaknesses
We didn't really ever get our parts and tools together before the tournament. We were helping a team the night before, and we had our tools out to help them instead of packing, then never really reconsolidated them.

Oppurtunities
We should take full advantage of non-Saturday practices to prep before the tournament. While some people did show up, not everyone was able to, and we'd like to increase attendance as much as possible. We also need to prepare ASAP, not right before the tournament. We also ought to make flair for our team like pins or something similar to get our name out and bribe teams with.

Threats
We're high school students at one of the top schools in the nation, so we're pretty busy. Despite that, we really should increase attendance so we can get more work done.

Judging

Strengths
We won the First Place Inspire Award, so we're definitely doing something right. We got mentioned for every single award but Motivate. We got all our content across, and we told a good story, but we still have room to improve.

Weaknesses
We need to smooth over our presentation in several areas. First, we need to sync up our presentation so that our laptops show the same slides. We also need to clarify our content between last year's accomplishments and this year's. Our transitions need a bit of work - we came off as rusty - and we also need to cut our time down by doing so.
We also need to be more effective in the pits of the tournament. We need to look active, and we don't do a great job of doing that. We also need the team to become more educated in the intricate parts of our team.

ALSO: ENTHUSIASM

Oppurtunities
We want to make our engineering journal stand out more - we have some ideas such as adding robot parts to our journal to make it snazzy. Also eventually, we want to get a tent for the pits to stand out.

Robot Performance

Strengths
For the *first* time ever, we had ZERO disconnects on our phones. We can partially attribute this to using new phones, the Moto Gs. As well, our jewel auto worked every single match, 100% success rate. The newest glyph system worked amazingly, but we still have room for improvement.

Weaknesses
We need a way to build more 3D-printed parts to outrace the constant wear and tear of the tournaments. We also had issues with Vuforia, and we ought to work on phone placement to fix that, which ties in to retuning our autonomous glyph tuning. We also need to add strain relief to the hub power cable.

Oppurtunities
We need to work on driver practice more with the new gripper. We also need the drivers, as well as everyone else, to get more sleep.
We're going to try and assemble more intake systems, such as a chain flipper, improved glyph system, and forward rake to test the intakes.

Scouting

Strengths
Abhi did a great job scouting. This was one of our best scouting tournaments, and there aren't many critiques of it.

Weaknesses
We need to make sure teams can follow up on their claims because some teams frankly just bs when asked about their robot. We also need to take more photos for blog posts and the presentation.

Oppurtunities
We need to have better accounts of the matches, and we need to watch other teams' matches.