How to Best Manage a Small Team

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by AZDevilRobot

Hey guys,

I was just wondering, for any small teams out there (for reference, mine is about 20 members) how do you best utilize your members and how do you handle commitment? We have tried to split up our members into teams but when a team is only three members and the lead is usually at another club or work, it does not really work too well. Also, on certain days when half the club is involved in another organization, very little work gets done since few people are there. We can't really ask anyone to choose between robotics and sports or other clubs but building a robot in six weeks requires a lot of attendance. Right now we just have people come when they can but I am wondering if there may be another system. Thanks.

The other system I can think of is mandatory hours of commitment to the team. This is by far one of the biggest and most important events for a robotics team (IMHO) so it should be top priority. I know a lot of teams start with the foot in this and then inch forward. Remind the students that actual cash money is going into this and that without the appropriate work to utilize all the money put in the money won't be there next year, and instead of working on robots you will be working on fund raising.
Also if your team Leads aren't reliable maybe they shouldn't be leads.
You absolutely can ask if they choose between robotics or another club because other clubs will ask the same students to choose as well. So its fair game to me and in the end that is how the real world works, when you join the workforce you are committed to something and you can't really drop that for other responsibilities.
Few questions I have
May I ask what your building access looks like?
What times do you normally meet?
How do you divide people up?
Whats up with your mentors how are they doing?
Can you work remotely through things like Skype and Google Hangouts?
Why does this other organization need 10 people every week that seems to be a lot of man (or woman) power?
Do you set goals for days and really push for them to get done or do you enforce they get done?

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by jrw

Why not? If you join a football team there are certain expectations about your commitment - you don't get to skip every training session and expect to play in the grand final.

Everyone has to make decisions about what is important to them - and joining a robotics team means it has to be important enough for you to meet the expectations that the team has of its members (whatever they might be) - and this might mean it needs to be important enough for you to make sacrifices elsewhere. IMHO one of the foundations of a team is that team members need to be able to rely on one another to actually turn up so that work can be done. Turning up every now and then when you don't have a better offer is unfair to everyone else (and pretty rude if you ask me). "I'll come and hang out with you guys if I can't find something better to do..."

Why should mentors give up their time to help young people who might not even turn up?

If you want to create a strong, diverse team - learn to work with and around the kids, their schedules, and other activities. If you want to compete against football, basketball, wrestling, hockey, gymnastics for team members, good luck.

FRC 4607 wants the best kids in the school. When we started the program in 2013, all of the 24 students were involved in other activities I believe of the 50 we have now, all but 5 are in other activities). We have created a balance at Becker where we have set times that we expect all team members to attend (Large Group Meetings). Then each squad lays out when and how long they meet during the other 4 days of the week. Saturday build days are expected that students are here (some have conflicts that we work around).

Just my two cents...

[Addison4300]

My first year of doing FIRST in 2013, our team consisted of about 8 members. It was quite difficult for us to get anything done as we didn't have enough hands for the job. Our team has grown since then to a whopping 20 members! We have our Teacher sponsor, 4 mentors from Emerson, a mentor from Raytheon, and 2 team captains, another member and myself. It is quite difficult to manage our team but we found splitting the team into 2 different teams, 1 for build, 1 for programming/cad/business works very well! We use 1 of our captains to monitor Programming, and the other to monitor the build team.

[AZDevilRobot]

Hi again,

First of all, thank you guys for the advice. It's nice to see so many teams willing to help out a team that is still growing.

However, I have a couple of clarification statements about my team. First, my school actually only consists of about 150 students. We cap each grade at 60 but people have left without replacements. About half participate in clubs and sports and thus, many students cross over between clubs. With a relatively small number of students, no club ever asks their students to choose. They choose to work around schedules instead. Only one club ever meets on a day and during the off season, attendance is high since robotics occupies Wednesday and we only meet that one day a week. When build season hits, Wednesday is still the highest day but people are out other days to attend their clubs. Maybe my wording in the initial post was harsh or misinterpreted but we do have decent dedication. Our rule is you attend your other commitment first, and since robotics lasts longer than other clubs, you can come to robotics late. The "little work" that I mentioned only happens at the point when the two clubs overlap. Once everybody is bakc in the same room, productivity goes up. We do have people though that come and stay the entire time after school and these people get lead roles since they are the most dedicated. We have talked to the lead I mentioned in the OP and they have started to attend more regularly now that basketball season is over. Other people also picked up the slack and that team is moving again.

When people show up, even if it is late, they do put in the effort. It actually happens that the people with other commitments work harder than those that stay because they feel they have to make up the time. Every member in the club knows that robotics is a lot of work and knowing everyone's schedule, we usually keep our robot minimal. We sometimes feel it is better to have one super component than three or four "eh" components. By keeping the goals manageable, we can still have fun, make something we are proud of and everyone can manage their responsibilities.

As for accountability, our advisor recently created a contract stating that in order to be in the club, you must pay a fee and put in the effort. At his discretion, he can remove anybody from the day's meeting or the team(which has never happened) and their money will not be refunded. As our cost is $95, people have a bit of an incentive to work when they are in the club. With the regional, we never bar anyone as everyone does put the effort in when they can. That being said, the drive team only consists of people who have put the most effort in.

As I said, maybe my OP was considered harsh or I worded it wrong but the problem is not as bad as I made it sound. I was only wondering if there would be a way to continue moving along at a steady pace and not lose steam while still allowing everyone to honor their other commitments. After reading everyone's posts, it appears that we have been following some of the ideas posted all along. We have a core dedicated group and every member helps out whenever they can. We don't bite off more than we can chew and are still able to create some amazing robots.

Once again, thank you for the advice and best of luck to all teams.

[Charlie2016]

I believe that 20 kids is about the perfect size for an frc team (maybe even less than that) Iv worked on a team of 60 kids, and currently on a team of around 15. I can honestly say that with out a doubt, I have gotten more out of a smaller team. It's just like a classroom, it is easier to learn in a smaller class. With more kids it becomes difficult to keep all hands on the robot. Having a 15 kid team with 15 committed minds will get more done than a team of 60 with 5 committed minds any day. What it really comes down to is that you get out of it what you put in. That is the difficulty. In order to have a successful small team, you really need to have all hands on deck. One thing I will say is that students (from my experience) are more motivated to work for a smaller team. You have a greater sense of pride and accomplishment when seeing the finished product.

[Addison4300]

Our team, during the build season works Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays until 9PM, and Wednesdays, and Thursdays until 6PM. This has been a really effective way to get so much accomplished in the short 6 weeks we have to build. On Monday and Tuesday, we give all the team members 1.5 hours to get homework done. then at 6pm we all have dinner together. We also made a time slot sign up form for every member to fill out each week to say what days you can stay and until what time.