Team Structure

[safiq10]

Hello! Our team is thinking about changing our team structure and before we changed it we wanted to see what you have to say about either our current structure or to what we are thinking of moving too.

Now our current structure is that we have 3 separate groups within our team that work on their respective task throughout the year.

1. Design
2. Business
3. Engineering & Programming

Now Design main purpose is to design cool shirts and accessories that our team uses that year. Our Design team is made up of 3 female members.

Then our buisness team they are in charge of everything that isnt the robot. So chairmans, outreach, funding, and ECT. The Business team is made up of 10 members. Which 9 of 11 members are female.

Then Engineering and programming they build the robot (no CAD) and program the robot. Now their are 10 members in engineering, which all but one of the members is male.

Now the all the girlson the team approached me asking to be on engineering and programming. So we have no one left on design and we have 2 people left in buisness.

So our thought was what if we simplify it and remove the groups and have everyone in engineering except for a few certain one who will be working on chairmans and outreach.

Switching to this new system will allow us to have a CAD team of 7 and our programming team can grow from 2 to 5.

Then this upcoming year we will receive about 4 hours of class time a week for robotics. So our thought is that we can work on funding and chairmans in class and after school and finish most of chairmans and finish all t-shirt designs by kickoff. Then the team can switch over to engineering while the select group works on perfecting chairmans.

The only downside we see to this is that we need train all the members while they have responsibilities for business and we might struggle to meet our annual goal of 20k.

So what do you think should we switch into this new structure or should we continue to use what we have or should we try something completely new. Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance!

[TheKeeg]

Truck Town Thunder is structured in such a way that every member has some interaction with the robot and everyone has a responsibility on the managerial side of the team. To do this, there are two major groups on the team; Technical and Managerial. An example of each could be Chassis and Website. Each member has to be in one group from each of the two. I, for example, was in Manipulator 3 (shooter group) and Design (even though design/CAD is more or less a technical group, it is considered managerial for various reasons). Another student might be in Programming and Media.
Here are the sub-groups that I remember:
Technical:
Chassis
Manipulator (1,2,3)
Programming
Field Build and Bumpers
Managerial:
Design
Website
Scouting/strategy
Media
Awards

I may be forgetting one but you get the point. This system enables each student to be a part of a group they really like but are also exposed to other things. Then there are people like me who only care about robots and choose to be in design and manipulator (no affiliation with the real managerial side of the team)...whatever floats your boat. The system also eliminates major segregation of males and females within the team. It worked for us; give it some thought.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by safiq10

Now the all the girlson the team approached me asking to be on engineering and programming. So we have no one left on design and we have 2 people left in buisness.
[...]
So what do you think should we switch into this new structure or should we continue to use what we have or should we try something completely new. Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance!

The following is my opinion only. Take as you will.

Looking at your current structure, you seem to have committed one of the classic blunders (namely, stereotypical assignment of roles), as well as not having enough flexibility to adapt when your teammates decide that the previous item was, in fact, a blunder. It's good that you've recognized that as an issue, and are working to figure out how to deal with it.

Your proposed structure--everyone working on everything, at least for some time--ought to work out pretty well. And here's why.

1) The entire team works on X for a bit, then transitions. That way, the entire team knows what's going on with X. If you need some extra focus on X, you can pick out just about any team member and they'll know most of what's going on.

2) Because the entire team works on all areas, every person on the team has a chance to figure out where they fit and what they're good at. Let's say that someone discovers during the preseason that they're really good at graphic design--they're now on the design team. (Not that they can't work on the robot, just that if there's a design item, they get the opportunity to hone their design skills.) Conversely, you also find out what people aren't good at/don't want to do, so you can either give them more practice or quietly redirect them. So maybe you do end up with the current structure, but you get the people that actually want to be in each group in each group.

3) The business work probably shouldn't take the full weekly time every week, which allows for plenty of training time across all areas of the team that need it. If not, take a couple of weeks and focus on training.

4) It becomes a lot easier to spin off a small group for a couple of hours to focus on a specific project--this can be an invaluable ability when something isn't working right. The reason it's easier is the amount of practice you've been getting at doing just that.

As a note, when I was a student, the entire team worked on the robot--or on fundraising--or on whatever else needed doing as the students were available. It wasn't uncommon for a small group to break off for a few hours to work on non-robot items, or on developing backup plans in case of designs not working. Technically, we were on subteams, but mostly that was "this is what I want to specialize in".


Again, the preceding is my opinion. Whatever works best for you guys is the way you should actually go; recognizing that what you have isn't working out right means that asking for suggestions is a good idea.

[M. Lillis]

177 uses a basic structure. I put the reletive kids per group in parenthesis.

CADD (5)
Controls (3)
Mech (6)
Fundraising (6)
Media (4)
Total 24 kids, some filter in and out through the season, but this is the dedicated crew.

We have experimented with splitting media into two groups (Video and website), and that did not work very well. Pick what works best for your team's size.

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by M. Lillis

177 uses a basic structure. I put the reletive kids per group in parenthesis.

CADD (5)
Controls (3)
Mech (6)
Fundraising (6)
Media (4)
Total 24 kids, some filter in and out through the season, but this is the dedicated crew.

We have experimented with splitting media into two groups (Video and website), and that did not work very well. Pick what works best for your team's size.

From what I have gathered, OP wasn't necessarily asking on the size of the setup, but how one would arrange the structure such that it is not only strong, but adaptive to the changing interests of the students.

To throw my $.02 into this ring, my old team is (was) very similar to OPs team. We had a rigid set of teams, and for the most part, people did what their groups were assigned. However, we didn't discourage folks from taking a peek over the fence to the other groups. Business/Marketing folks would be asked to help with high level designs and provide feedback while Technical folks would be asked for feedback on presentations.

I will say that while the system didn't impose any inter-group restrictions; they naturally formed. As such, non-technical folks were not exposed to the technical aspects of the machine as the technical folks, and the same was true vice versa.

Just as a note, I think this topic/line of discussion is insanely interesting, and actually has had me thinking for the past few days.

- Sunny G.

[kk052]

our team went though a restructure this year to solve the problem of people not working on things that are not their direct field, so we removed ALL fields, this can solve the issue of people wanting one one ""team" over another. our structure is:
2 co captins for marketing/fundraising
2 co captins for bot making (machinery programming and cad)
(vary few) specialists (basically teachers of catagorys like a cad teacher a programming teacher a marketing/t shirt design teacher)
(the rest of the people) generalists, can be told to market or make robots, if they don't know how a specialist will show them

the co captins job is to ensure that everyone is working, anyone can do most tasks, however there is the massive downside of training.

there is also a robot design team within all this but its complicated to explain, and not important to solve the problem at hand

this new system worked well for us, in your situation it would solve the issue of not needing to dedicate people to certain categories.

[Seth Mallory]

On 192 in the fall all 54 students are trained in Cad, pneumatics, electrical, engineering, and the entire machine shop except CNC and welding. The students that want to learn those skills come in after school. They also have training in engineering and rapid prototyping. During this time they participate in 3 small group design compations that use CAD, prototype, and finished project. We may replace one with a build project this year. Now the new students start to move into groups for the robot. After all of this it is hard to find students to be willing to do the business side of the team. With effort we 4 -8 each year.