Team Organization

[Chief Hedgehog]

Can anyone share their hierarchy of their team? I am interested in the actual structure of the team, team roles, responsibilities, etc. Other things I am interested in is how Captains/Officers/leaders are chosen or appointed.

I would really love to see some charts on how the team is structured. This year we have a student leadership team - but our team structure has been a little ambiguous the last two years!

Thanks and good luck in Bag 'n tag!

[cadandcookies]

First off, this topic has been around the block (a quick search would turn up quite a few threads). That being said, because I've never actually posted a particularly in-depth summary of my team's structure, I'll bite.

Structure:
Team 2220 has, for the past few years, structured ourselves in "subteams"-- groups of 3-7 students and a few mentors who are responsible for some particular part of the robot or team operations. This structure is a necessity for us, as we have 82 students and 35 mentors this year. Without having a well-defined structure, the team would dissolve into utter chaos (which isn't to say that it's military rigidity, but we at least need a skeleton).

These subteams each have a lead student and mentor, who are responsible for the budget, presenting at design reviews, creating a BOM (if it's a robot subteam), serving as the contact point and "face' of their subteam, and representing their subteam at weekly leadership meetings. These students apply for their position and are then selected by a group of mentors and selected upperclassmen.

Our captains serve on a year-by-year basis, and are required to be juniors or seniors,and have at least one previous year of leadership experience. They apply for the position, and then are voted on by the mentors, alumni, and students from that year. While not everyone on the team agrees with this, the rules and methodology for elections are clearly communicated.

We restructure our team three times-- for build season, for competition season, and for the outreach season. Subteams tend to be relatively concrete for build season, very rigid for competition season, and rather amorphous for outreach season.

I'll try to get an org chart that doesn't have full student names on it. Feel free to ask me any questions about our structure here or via PM.

[Chief Hedgehog]

Cadncookies - I will see 2220 at Centurion-Krawler this weekend. I am easily spotted when with my team - larger guy with hair that doesn't stay combed. If you are there, we can talk. We also have a few items of yours to give back anyway.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

I don't think I've ever posted a full summary either, so here goes.

Our leadership is updated yearly. Each May, once the competition season is over, we first elect new presidents. Prospective candidates (they have to be incoming juniors or seniors) make speeches about why they should be president. We show their hour counts on a projector (that's how we measure how much effort you're putting in), and team members fill out online forms about how likely they'd be to respect and follow a given candidate. The previous year's presidents then meet with our mentors and decide on 1-3 presidents for the year, using the survey results, observations, and what they've seen from the candidates.

Selecting managers is a little more flexible. Around the time that we're selecting presidents, interested members contact our head mentor and set up a time to meet. Once all the applicants have met with him, the mentors and presidents meet and hammer things out. Managerial positions normally only open if the previous manager stepped down or graduated, so some years we see very little turnover.

The actual 'chain of command' is very different from department to department. For example, both of our presidents this year are Fabrication managers, so they pretty much lead that department. However, I'm the Chairman's and Outreach manager, and neither of them is as experienced as me in that field. Because of this, I'm leading the Chairman's team, and while they check in with me often, I'm the one making the final calls on what to include.

As for responsibilities, it's pretty simple: presidents keep an overall view of what's happening on the team and serve as the public face of the team, while managers coordinate how stuff gets done in their departments. This can include delegation of important tasks to other (non-managerial but veteran) members or leading the charge themselves.

Chart-wise, first of all we don't have one, so that would be difficult. Also, with the varying degrees of autonomy between departments, it would be one confusing chart.

Hope I helped!

[Jscout11]

Yeah I remember seeing a similar thread not too long ago. That being said, Team 11's structure for the past two years is:

-Technical Captain (2)

-Mechanical Captain (2)
-Design Captain (2)
-Electrical Captain (1)
-Programming Captain (1)

-Robot
-Website
-Android

-CNC/3D Printing* (1)

-Non Technical Captain (1)

-Scouting (2)
-Business (1)
-Chairmans (1)
-Video/Graphics (1)
-Archiver* (1)

*New this season

The responsibilities of each captain/sub-team are pretty self explanatory. The Technical Captains make the final decisions on robot related matters. Leaders are chosen through an application process that includes creating a resume, interviewing with lead mentors and alumni, and writing several mini-essays. This process also takes into account the student's prior contributions to the team. Leadership is exclusive to juniors and seniors (students can only enter into 11 as sophomores and can't be a leader their first year). This helps us keep the team of roughly 100 members organized.

Freshmen are automatically placed into FRC 193 MORT Beta, which has a much less rigid structure. There are no captains; everyone is exposed to all facets of the robot process. They operate almost completely independently from 11, and are run primarily by alumni. MORT Beta has 50+ members in 2014

We've been doing massive restructuring on 11 for the past few years, especially in 2013 with the inception of 193. We are pretty confident based on the results of this year's build that our current system is effective for our team. That being said, your team structure should be whatever works best for you.

[Chief Hedgehog]

That is a great way to conduct your team cascadekid. My question for you is this - how do you accurately account for hours and who is responsible for checking these?

We have a sign in for each day - but hours are not factored in. We have a CFO (Accounting department) responsible for keeping records and tabulating the days for each member.

We may need to adjust our system as our team is now over 35 members.

Thanks!

[xXhunter47Xx]

Since we have a small group of students (being our second year), this may or may not be valid to you.

During summer 2013 after the competition, we branched out into marketing and research to get money for this season. Our school has a club fair every year around early October, and we set up a sign up thing. Many people signed up, but very little showed up to the orientation.

In the off season we did teambuilding exercises and see who fits in where. During these sessions it was mainly "build team" and "programming team".
We would have a sign up sheet for those interested in doing programming and those interested in doing build, and then we put them to work to see if they fit there.
Although nothing is set in stone, we have a good idea of who does what once build season begins.
Each team is consisted of a leader (upperclassman), a sub leader (freshman-sophomore), and at least one mentor.
The point of the upperclassman leader is to make sure everyone is on task.
The sub leader does a lot of the meaty work to get them prepared for the next season, where they can eventually take over once us upperclassman leave for college.

Each team's leader is supposed to communicate with each other a lot (although that hasn't been happening, kind of my fault) to provide information on what's to be built and programmed.

We also have a sign in sheet. It's to keep track of who's clocking in hours of work and who isn't. It also helps that our team is fairly small and we can easily keep track of who's working hard and who's hardly working. The hours clocked in will designate your eligibility to come to competition or not. Obviously team leaders and sub leaders are already guaranteed a spot because they are the ones holding the team together, but other than that the deciding factor on who attends or not will be determined by hours.

As you can see our team is very student run. Everything that was described was thought up by us, the students. The mentors provide their professional background when they see fit but for the most part they let us hit things with wrenches and see how long it takes for us to figure out that that's not how the wrench is supposed to be used. They are great mentors but they realize that it's not their job to build the robot which is great for us.

"FRC combines the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology. Under strict rules, limited resources, and time limits, teams of 25 students or more are challenged to raise funds, design a team "brand," hone teamwork skills, and build and program robots to perform prescribed tasks against a field of competitors. It’s as close to "real-world engineering" as a student can get."

We keep this in mind whenever we do something. The people we have on the team is like the people you have to work with every day for 8 hours when you get a job. We have to run everything on our own because that's what it's like in the real world.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

Cadncookies - I will see 2220 at Centurion-Krawler this weekend. I am easily spotted when with my team - larger guy with hair that doesn't stay combed. If you are there, we can talk. We also have a few items of yours to give back anyway.

I'll probably be there. Standing outside our pit in blue shoes and a sparkly blue hat with Killer Bees antennae. If I don't end up over there I'll make sure someone that goes is prepared to talk with you.

[Chief Hedgehog]

I did do a few searches on 'Team Organization', 'Organization', 'Team Structure', etc., but found little in the way of what I wanted.

I appreciate the responses thus far, especially seeing how teams select their incoming leadership. We thought we had a good foundation heading into this year - but being fairly new to the sport - we still found ways to smudge the lines.

We have a team that is about 35 strong - and I only see it growing next year. Here is what I am thinking for this next year (Pre-Season/Build season alone):

FRC Build Season Executive Council
CEO Executive
CFO Financial
CCOO Communications and Outreach
CDDO Drive/Deck
CECO Electrical and Components
CSO Strategy
CBFO Build & Fabrication
CPSO PIT & Safety
CPOO Programming and Operations
CBPO Bumpers and Perimeter

As you can surmise, we keep our mentors close to our organizational strategy. We are fortunate to have VERY dedicated companies that offer their employees time to mentor - and many of these mentors are also on local boards of local organizations.

I do like the Chief *** Officer format - that is what fits FRC 4607...

Thanks all!

[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?

[Jacob Bendicksen]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

That is a great way to conduct your team cascadekid. My question for you is this - how do you accurately account for hours and who is responsible for checking these?

We have a sign in for each day - but hours are not factored in. We have a CFO (Accounting department) responsible for keeping records and tabulating the days for each member.

We may need to adjust our system as our team is now over 35 members.

Thanks!

We have a fingerprint scanner (sounds fancy, not especially though) by the door to sign in and sign out. Outside hours are submitted through an online form.

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by TheCascadeKid

We have a fingerprint scanner (sounds fancy, not especially though) by the door to sign in and sign out. Outside hours are submitted through an online form.

We were looking into Barcodes on the back of our lanyard passes - but we haven't gotten the passes yet (oops!).

Where did you find the finger scanner?

[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.