Big teams

[Grim Tuesday]

With my team quickly growing, we have been keeping a similar system of hierarchy/membership as when we were a small team. We require that all members have as many hours as possible to go to all competitions, etc...
We have about 55 members, and will probably grow more next year.

I was wondering how many of the "superteams" deal with stuff like member attendance, keeping the team at manageable level (cuts), gender balance, etc...

On a related subject, our early season design process is also tailored for a smaller team. How, in detail, do the superbig teams do it? Do you guys just have a small "design corps?" Or is it a full out team effort?

Thanks in advance!

[akoscielski3]

I know my team has applications and an interview to try and get on the team. Otherwise we would have ALOT of members on our team. One year over 150 students applied to be on the team. I dont think that we will ever be able to accommodate that many people! We also have diffrent sections that peopel can apply for and have leaders for each section (like alot of teams). We try not to have over 30 students, otherwise it just gets crouded and nothing gets done. I also find that working with less students you can get stuff done faster, because they are easy to control and you can communicate with them all (And know wat they do best, that can help the team). For us 55 students is ALOT!!!!!

You also need a large area to keep all of your team members. It doesn't matter if you have 3 people or 55 people in the room at a time, the more people you have, the more space you need. Our team would be a lot larger if we had more room. We're currently stuck in a back closet, and we cap out at 20 or so people. in our room, and that's with the robot outside!

[popnbrown]

So what tends to happen with our team (at least when I was on it) was this timeline:

-Team Captains (including Sub-Team captains) would be picked.
-Any other member already on the team or wanting to be on the team fills out an application with their contact information, what other activities they are in, and the top 3 sub-teams they want to be in.
- Based on that we sit down and sort the kids into their respective sub-teams. The activities criteria is our biggest, since a lot of students try to join as many clubs and never end up doing any work.
- After that we have our sub-team captains try to do weekly meetings during the off-season to sort of catch everyone up as to what's going on. These meetings are supposed to keep track of attendance of the team members, so we can tell who is not really on the team for the team.

This entire process eventually leads to about 60 students that are left, out of which we have about 30 consistently dedicated students, that always show up and do work. These 30 are generally the ones that travel and are allowed to travel, with exceptions.

The process works amazingly for us, since at the end of the day several kids realize that it's not at all what they want to do and/or they're not willing to put time into getting a reward (aka travelling).


As for the design, we generally have meetings in the first week and have the entire team split up and start designing different ideas. Although this slows us down a bit, since we waste a week or two without some sub-teams doing what they are responsible for. I feel that the design of the robot is one that represents the whole team. It also allows more discussion, more "devil's advocates" and in general the feeling of a team! At the end of the second week, we have a mentor's meeting, where the students show their ideas to the mentors, and we start putting together prototypes, and the sub-teams get to doing their work.

[stupidgerman]

For travel team, TJ2 puts together a ranking system. You get 10 points for every hour you work and 1 point for every dollar you raise. Along with this, you have to raise a minimum of $700 and work 30 hours for a veteran and 20 hours for a rookie. It doesn't matter what your role on the team is, only the top 40 in this ranking get to travel with the team. Also with the money, only $300 is allowed to come from your family so no one buys their way onto the team.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

WildStang is a credit class in our school system. Students must register through normal channels to be on the team. The class meets throughout the year, IRI included, and students receive a grade based on participation, homework, and quality of work in sub teams through feedback from adult mentors. Attendance is taken regularly and all student must be present for Monday night meetings or go through normal excused absence channels. The students are told and reminded at regular intervals that travel team, drive team and pit crew are positions that are earned not gifted. Students begin the year knowing that a skeleton crew will attend our away regional, everyone can attend the Midwest Regional and a select group will travel to Champs. The skeleton crew is chosen on the student's capabilities but they must meet minimum for attendance and grades. More than one of our drivers over the years has learned the hard way that maintaining grades is more important than being a good driver. Now with Champs only 5 hours away, students can travel with their parents but cannot receive excused absences from classes for team participation. Grade minimum for travel is no D's or F's and a passing grade in robotics. Minimum for drive team is the same but must have an A in robotics. If there are not enough students that meet travel mins, we just reduce the number we take on the road. Once we have a list of students who meet academic requirements, then the mentors pick who is most valuable, who has fund raised their travel expenses, who deserves the privilege and can perform scouting or other duties (i.e. Chairman's Booth at Champs) and the final determination is how many can fit on the bus. We normally lose students for various reasons throughout the year. This year we started with just over eighty and had about seventy prior to Champs. We traveled 39 with an additional group traveling with parents for Champs. Sixteen went to Milwaukee and some of that decision is based on the male to female ratio when weighed against hotel rooms (based on four students to a room).

[Rhubarb]

To expand on what Josh said,

Our travel team is limited to ~42 students, for simple practical reasons: That is how many students fit on a standard bus (plus chaperones). One season we hired two buses and tried to travel with all the students. Besides the added expense, it was logistically challenging to keep track of everyone so we've gone back to just one bus. We usually see 35 to 55 students actively participating on the team.

At the build meeting, we generally have students break up into subsystems (drive train, arm, minibot, electronics, etc). Each subsystem group brainstorms ideas then breaks into even smaller groups to prototype the ideas. We try to limit the prototyping group size to no more than 4 students. So it's not unusual to have 2-3 prototypes for each subsystem developing in parallel. All of the build team gathers at the end of the night to give updates on the progress of their prototypes. When a prototype is complete, the students demonstrate the function, list the strengths and weaknesses, answer questions and get feedback from the team. Students are allowed and encouraged to float between subsystems throughout the season.

[rachelholladay]

This is on a bit of a different note but highly related. We are a growing team, with this past year having under forty students. We have a system of officers (president, vp, secretary, historian, treasurer) and captains (strategy, safety, controls, challenge, chassis, animation, CAD). What we find is that a lot of new students tend to just join the mechanical teams, chassis and challenge. Sometimes, there are too many students and just not enough jobs. (there are only so many sets of Allen keys!) We would really like some of these students in different areas, like video, CAD, etc. It was not as much of a problem this year, but we see developing more into an issue. We don't want to assign people to teams for the obvious reasons. I guess we are wondering how the big teams make sure there is the appropriate amount of people working on each subteam.

[DoronS]

Our team has over 100 members on our official roster, and we've developed some strategies for dealing with that.
In terms of recruitment, we'll accept anyone who wants to join our team, and have no application process. All that we require is that team members maintain their grades (>=85) and fulfill a volunteering requirement. We probably get around 75ish newbies every year, but by the end of build season, most of them leave, and we're left with around 25. Out of these, perhaps 10 will eventually be fairly dedicated to the team, and 5 will become "core" members. So, out of 100ish total members, only half are fairly dedicated, and only about twenty are considered "core," and end up getting leadership positions.
To handle our numbers, we've divided ourselves into one FRC team and two FTC teams. Each team competes separately at the NYC regional, but during the build season, we hold concurrent lab meetings. If I was to make a guesstimate, I would say that we have about 20 FTC members, but there are always some FTC people who work on FRC projects and vise versa.
Within our FRC team, we are divided into engineering, programming, and marketing. People can switch divisions whenever they want, and this often happens before people settle on one area. In each area, if there are a lot of people, we'll try and delegate our projects as much as possible in order to expose members as much as possible to the team. For instance, in engineering, we'll have one core member be director of field construction. That person splits up a group of team members into specific projects, such as building a trailer or peg wall, and is responsible for making sure everything gets done in the end (by teaching everyone how to do everything), but everyone does the work.
I'd like to point out that we do have the advantage of having a fairly large working space in a school of 3,300 students, but I believe many of the division and delegation strategies can be used to run a team efficiently while still affecting the maximum number of people possible.

[topgun]

Originally Posted by Rhubarb

To expand on what Josh said,

At the build meeting, we generally have students break up into subsystems (drive train, arm, minibot, electronics, etc). Each subsystem group brainstorms ideas then breaks into even smaller groups to prototype the ideas. We try to limit the prototyping group size to no more than 4 students. So it's not unusual to have 2-3 prototypes for each subsystem developing in parallel. All of the build team gathers at the end of the night to give updates on the progress of their prototypes. When a prototype is complete, the students demonstrate the function, list the strengths and weaknesses, answer questions and get feedback from the team. Students are allowed and encouraged to float between subsystems throughout the season.

Do you have 1 or more mentors per prototype group? Or do you rely on a student leader per prototype group to lead the group?

The issue we have is that we are short on mentors providing mentoring about ideas, prototypes, providing expertise.

[Rhubarb]

Originally Posted by topgun

Do you have 1 or more mentors per prototype group? Or do you rely on a student leader per prototype group to lead the group?

The issue we have is that we are short on mentors providing mentoring about ideas, prototypes, providing expertise.

Mentor coverage is something we are also working to improve. We may have 1 or 2 mentors per sub system (not per prototype team) and have to float between the prototype groups. You become masters of multi-tasking!

We hold pre-season build meetings to familiarize students with the materials and equipment in our build room so they have a basic level of comfort performing tasks on their own. For groups that need lots of hand holding, the mentor can meet with the group, make suggestions then leave them with a task to work on while you move on to the next group. Everyone builds in the same room, so you can keep an eye on the progress and safety of all of the groups.

My typical conversations and task assignments for prototyping groups sound like this and usually end with 'I'll be back in 20 minutes':
- You want it to work like a fork lift. How does a forklift mechanism work? If you don't know, try to Google it then make a napkin sketch.
- I see your napkin sketch. What materials do you think you can use to make this piece? Not sure? Try this suggestion or go rummage through the cabinet for ideas.
- Now you've got the materials, use a marker to draw on the part what you want to cut/drill. If you are not comfortable with or trained to use the equipment, bring it to a mentor when you are ready. If the students are not able to make a drawing of the part (with dimensions) before the part is made, have them do it after the part is made.
- Got all the pieces? Now assemble and test! What are you going to test and how?
- You have a functional prototype. How much does it weigh? Does it meet all the rules? How will it interact with the other subsystems? What parts don't work well and how can you make it better? Get ready to present your work to the team!

More experienced groups will move through these steps on their own and come to you when they get stuck.

Unfortunately when you are short on mentors, it is easy to run out of time for more detailed engineering analysis. We are always interested in finding ways to improve on this.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

In addition to what Doron said:

For design, everyone attends a big brainstorming session the day of kickoff. After that, people tend to settle into their areas. For example, the marketers work on marketing. In this way, there are less people trying to physically do things around the bot. And there are sub-design groups as well. Different people worked on multiple designs for the minibot and I think the arm.

For traveling, anyone who wants to pay and has appropriate grades can come. For our away regional, the group was split into two so the "less critical" people only missed one day of school.

I'm impressed that Wildstang operates as a class!

[Grim Tuesday]

What does Wildstang do in the off season? Or is the build season counted as an entire semester credit (I did the math, if you attend all of our build sessions, you end up having more hours than a full year of a class--atleast in my school)

[akeisic]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

I was wondering how many of the "superteams" deal with stuff like member attendance, keeping the team at manageable level (cuts), gender balance, etc...
Thanks in advance!

I just posted our clock-in system we use to help manage the logistics of attendance. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2490? Our policies on travel and drive team are similar to what's already been posted.

We transitioned into a much more involved systems engineering process http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2293 the bigger our team got. It really helped focus our efforts without alienating people's ideas.

[jaganser]

My team has been growing very rapidly as well. We have 40+ members of our FRC team and over 100 in our program. In order to make sure that everyone has something to do and can get their hands dirty we created a JV program with the FTC competition. This year we had all of our first year members on three FTC teams that were mentored by our returning members in the FRC team. This allows for students to be more involved and take leadership positions as first year members