Team Organization

[Chief Hedgehog]

@ xXhunter47Xx -

What were some of the team building exercises did your team try? We had a small group of leaders that were brainstorming on ideas this last season - but never came to fruition. Some ideas that they had were mouse trap cars, balsa bridges, etc.

Are these the same type you had going?

[xXhunter47Xx]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

@ xXhunter47Xx -

What were some of the team building exercises did your team try? We had a small group of leaders that were brainstorming on ideas this last season - but never came to fruition. Some ideas that they had were mouse trap cars, balsa bridges, etc.

Are these the same type you had going?

We actually had Tetrix stuff from when we did FTC and VEX stuff from the Principles of Engineering class that our head honcho teacher lovingly let us use. We had all this stuff laying around so we actually just stole a FTC challenge and gave it to the incoming members to get them used to the idea of building a robot. We gave them a six week period (similar to FRC, but only met once per week as opposed to 5 times a week for Build Season), and it gave everyone a taste of building a robot.
This also helped with our time management since programming did not finish programming the robot, so we had an idea of where these guys are.

If you have the money, I'd say invest in at least a Lego Mindstorms Kit and a set of lego Technic pieces to go along with it if you do not have VEX or Tetrix stuff. It not only provides a team building exercise in the off-season but will also provide a lot of prototyping potential.

[Tyler_Kaplan]

Our team has more of a business structure. The elected officials for our team make up the board of directors. Each director represents a specific division: Business, Fabrication, Engineering, Programming/Electrical, and Public Relations. Each director is elected to represent only that division for one full year. Major decisions are made by our board, but we have many Ex-Officious members who provide valuable input when we actually vote on a subject matter. After the directors, the second in command for a division is the Executive Task Manager (ETM). They are the second in command to serve in place of a director if they are absent. The directors are then responsible for delegating all the tasks that need to be accomplished respective to that division, and communicating with the directors of the other divisions. If you have any questions about it or if you would like to see our full constitution feel free to ask !

[Nick.kremer]

Team 3512's organization this year goes something like this:

-Robot Captain

• Mechanical Lead
• Drive Train Lead
• Appendage Lead 1*
• Appendage Lead 2*
• Electrical Lead
• Programming Lead
• Cad Lead

-Chairman's Captain

• Business Lead
• Outreach Lead

*We usually have two appendage leads, one for main game and the other for end game, this year since we had two really promising prototype designs so we had a lead for each design.

Every team has at least one mentor, and at least 2-3 students, a lot of time many more.

Leads are chosen by the our Head Coach, with a lot of input from previous leads and mentors.

[ElvisMom]

For hours we have a keypad with monitor at entrance - everyone enters their PIN as they come and go. Software is http://timeclockmts.com. Hours outside of the shop are documented and manually entered by team secretary. We post google doc without names (just PIN) on website so students can check their hours to make sure they are going to make their # to travel to competition. Right now we manually update the google doc every week, but might see if we can figure out how to automate after build.

We moved to electing our captains in May so they are in place over the summer. Captains prepare a brief speech about why they want role and students vote. Other roles are elected in October/November. Students self nominate for the role(s) they want and are then interviewed by the two captains. The captains, with input from adult mentors, present a slate of candidates to the team. Process worked well, but we always seem to tweak it a bit from year to year.

[zachrobo1]

Team 1002 has a fairly large club (around 130 people) that spans over 4 teams. To manage this, we have a fairly complicated system (arranged below):

Executive Board: Oversees operations of club

President

Vice-President

Fundraising Officer

Outreach Officer

Advisers (Other experienced members that advise club)

General Board: Handles other operations that deal with the club

Executive Board, plus

Webmaster

Media Officer

FRC Team Lead

FTC Team Lead

BEST Team Lead

GRITS (Offseason FRC) Team Lead

Rookie Team Lead

Next, we have outreach and fundraising committees that deal with the planning and executing of relevant events.

Finally, we have teams with subteam leads that usually consist of mechanical, electrical, Chairman's/Notebook, CAD, and various others for each competition.