The Struggles of Bigger Teams

[kiasam111]

In terms of the robot, we built 2 this season. The first was for prototyping, and was a backup in case our compbot was not ready. What we did was spent the first 2 weeks on protobot and then, using what we learnt on that, built our compbot in the remaining weeks. During this time, half the team continued building the protobot (as it wasn't completely done) and the other half worked on compbot.

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

4. Veteran students (more than 2 years), are NOT ALLLOWED TO TOUCH ANYTHING for the first 3-4 weeks of the season. Their purpose is now to train the new incoming members. You will never have enough mentors for a team over 30 people, so you co-op your experienced members into teaching. Once you hit 'crunch time' as we call it, all bets are off and the experienced members jump in to get 'er done..

I really don't agree with this at all for several reasons but the one I don't agree with is the mentor statement since our team is sitting at 21 active mentors across the various sub-teams meaning a mentor for every 2 students right now.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

I really don't agree with this at all for several reasons but the one I don't agree with is the mentor statement since our team is sitting at 21 active mentors across the various sub-teams meaning a mentor for every 2 students right now.

Teams have different resources and operate differently based on those resources. Depending on one's mentor to student ratio, some teams might have to rely on upperclassmen to pass down knowledge and train new students due to a low number of mentors. We had more mentors our first season with fewer students than this past season.

You seem to have a very high number of mentors so a system like 1718's would never work for you guys!

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Teams have different resources and operate differently based on those resources. Depending on one's mentor to student ratio, some teams might have to rely on upperclassmen to pass down knowledge and train new students due to a low number of mentors. We had more mentors our first season with fewer students than this past season.

You seem to have a very high number of mentors so a system like 1718's would never work for you guys!

I was just stating that he said that you could never have enough mentors to mentor a team of 30 effectively and you can, and we do. We are lucky for it I do admit

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

I was just stating that he said that you could never have enough mentors to mentor a team of 30 effectively and you can, and we do. We are lucky for it I do admit

My apologies!

Interesting topic though when and if a team can reach mentor saturation! Depends on the team size, mentor dedication (every meeting, all day, one day, etc), and the number of sub-teams.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

I was just stating that he said that you could never have enough mentors to mentor a team of 30 effectively and you can, and we do. We are lucky for it I do admit

That's an amazing number of knowledgeable mentors. Congratulations!

We've found that without doing the method of member-mentorship (especially on the controls team), you have a couple students really good at programming who handle everything for a couple years, then graduate. You're left with a new team who hasn't really done much with the robot.

Our structure strives to avoid that. Since the vast majority of our code is written in the first four weeks or so, this allows the newer folks to write it and the more experienced ones to go through and do the final debugging.

It also is a great experience for the members to learn how to effectively teach concepts and application. We've never had any complaints: all the controls folks get a lot of hands-on time with the robot (especially the practice bot) in the final few weeks post-bag.

[Gray Adams]

Sorry to keep this short, but in a team of 55 people, the biggest challenge is keeping people busy and feeling useful. People stop showing up when they there no there is nothing to do. There is ALWAYS something to do, its just a matter of keeping your team leadership on top of assigning work. Nobody wants to come to shop hours if they do nothing and leave. Similarly, people may get bored of not doing direct robot work. Keep people involved and make sure they know their work is important. You need a cart, a crate, a pit design, t shirts,: sponsor logos, a website...make sure everyone knows a team with a great robot and nothing else doesn't look amazing. You need those things, and people need to be busy.

I would comment on shop tools and design teams, but phones aren't well suited to that much typing.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

4. Veteran students (more than 2 years), are NOT ALLLOWED TO TOUCH ANYTHING for the first 3-4 weeks of the season. Their purpose is now to train the new incoming members. You will never have enough mentors for a team over 30 people, so you co-op your experienced members into teaching. Once you hit 'crunch time' as we call it, all bets are off and the experienced members jump in to get 'er done.

Our mantra is that if we're training during build, we've already failed.

We hold a lot of workshops in the fall for new members and the unfortunate reality is that come the end of the first week of January, the train is leaving the station and anyone who didn't get on board back in October is probably going to be less involved than they'd like.

Kids will be building skills they haven't learned to fully utilize yet, but it's incredibly difficult to take someone who has no background in the basics and involve them in a meaningful manner, due to limited mentor hours available.

[Seth Mallory]

I fine nothing wrong with Tom Line's statement. Having the veterans learn how to teach and mentor will help them long after they have left the team. If you can make it work then good for you. Cory's point splits the team into two categories. Those including 256 and 192 that can train hard preseason and those that cannot. Some teams because how they are organize must do some or all of their training during build. If that is your only choice good for you for trying. It makes things harder for you but I for one support your efforts. Much better then no team. 192 is able to train during the fall with the veterans doing most of the teaching. If you look on how a Boy Scout troop is supposed to be organized and change the names in the boxes you have how 192 is organized.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by kiasam111

In terms of the robot, we built 2 this season. The first was for prototyping, and was a backup in case our compbot was not ready. What we did was spent the first 2 weeks on protobot and then, using what we learnt on that, built our compbot in the remaining weeks. During this time, half the team continued building the protobot (as it wasn't completely done) and the other half worked on compbot.

You bring up a very effective stratey most large teams can adapt to increase team participation on success.

In 2008 our team was large, I forget the numbers but it was a large group with a good number of mentors. Our team was hung up on whether or not we should build a fast lap robot or go with the flow of hurdling. It wasn't an easy decision. How many laps can you do while trying to hurdle? Considering our large sizea decision was made that we could resonable build two robots: our main hurdling robot, Fezzik, and a lapbot, Speedracer, to be used if Fezzik wasn't done in time or proved to be inefficient. Unfortunately both were finished and proved effective come the end of build season so we stuck with Fezzik robot for competition season and used the Speedracer at off-seasons and fill in. In following seasons we adapted to an iterative build process and a practice bot. Attached is a photo of the two at Beantown Blitz where both competed.

If my current team grew to a large size both in students and mentors I would seriously consider having a small team work on a very simple backup robot. Not only is it a great contigency plan, it keeps students busy, and during the off-season you can enter both depending on the event you attend.

[Brandon Zalinsky]

Originally Posted by Cory

Our mantra is that if we're training during build, we've already failed.

I agree fully. We do VEX competitions and such to train our new students in the design process and construction of a robot. Our goal is to create build-season-like atmosphere to show the new students what the real build season is like. We feel that if students have already done something competitive and fun before build season, they'll be more likely to stay.

[Phoenix Spud]

I've been on a wide variety of teams when it comes to size. My first year we had about 20-ish (on 2342) to 50+ on 3132! One of the great things about a bigger team is you can engage with more aspects of the program--it is incredible everything that FIRST can include.

We have some students who have very little interest in building a robot, but they work on our website, animation, vlogs (through 5AwesomeRobots), videos, photos, documentation, and more!

My best advice is to try work on all the different aspects of FIRST, that way more students can have "ownership" of projects.