How is your team structured?

[nickbrickmaster]

My team has historically had a single captain, with a single tier of sub-team captains, with authority over the students in their sub-team. These roles are ill-defined, and leave some students thrust into leadership positions. We've been thinking about how effective this is for our situation, and what could be done better. So I pose this question to all of you:

How is your team structured?

Do you have a captain, a president, multiple co-captains, a supreme dictator, or do you have no student leadership at all? Do you have a flat structure, where everyone is equal rank, or many sub-tiers of captains, nested almost fractally?

In addition, how effective is this structure? How many students do you have?

If you have "job descriptions" so to speak, for these leadership positions, please share. What responsibilities are prescribed to them? Are these positions elected, volunteered, or mentor-chosen?

I'm generally thinking about students when I ask this question, but feel free to share how mentors fit in.

[orangelight]

Pages 6-18 from here
It works out pretty well for our 60 person team

[scott.smith]

We have officer positions, which are President, who handles outreach and build season happenings, and is the "face of the team". The build team manager (or vice president) is the main director during the build season, and oversees the overall robot construction. We also have personal relations, outreach, and treasurer, whose names are self explanatory, and admin, who takes attendance and handles the counting of volunteer hours, to see which kids are slacking for that month. (Necessary 4 hours of volunteering every month per person) We also have heads for each team (CAD, machining, electronics, programming, pneumatics, and media) who teach the rookies how to do their "trade" and handle the most important parts of their team. Lastly, every year each individual build team (Ex. Acquisition, shooting, drivetrain, scaling) have their own leader, who is the representative for meetings during build season, and has the biggest part in designing their teams system.

[Collin Stiers]

we have a student president, a student head engineer and a student project manager who form the "top 3" of our team. The team is then broken into sub teams each with a student captain and primary mentor for those sub teams.

We then have a committee made of the student leaders who make decisions. This "Technical Steering committee" contains the top 3, plus all sub-team captains. The committee makes most team decisions. Technically each person on the committee gets one vote and majority rules, however usually the committee doesn't actually vote, we discuss and then are able to reach a consensus. The teams head mentor and all of the subteam mentors also are part of the committee in a primarily advisory role.

[cscottm]

Team 2502 has four captains, Two Business, and Two Engineering, We also have a variety of lead positions, such as marketing, fundraising, outreach, safety, strategy, CAD, programming, electrical and pneumatic, and awards.

We have tried many different systems, and they seem to change every year.

[Jcarbon]

We have three student captains, who do a lot of the organization, planning, and general leadership of the team, and an outreach director. First, candidates for these positions submit resumes to the mentors, who choose all the qualified candidates. Then, the students vote to make the final decision.

During the build season, we have four engineering subteams (Controls, Chassis, Above Chassis, Fabrication) and each subteam has a team leader, responsible for coordinating meetings, planning schedules, etc., and a head engineer, responsible for overseeing engineering and integrating systems. All the head engineers and team leaders meet together regularly throughout the build season as the systems team.

The system is pretty complicated, but it works well, and it gives a lot of different students opportunities to take leadership responsibilities.

[Lili_1868]

In our team we have 4 captains: the mechanical captain, the programming captain, the business captain, and the marketing and outreach captain. Within each subteam we have directors, so for example, prototyping director (mechanical), autonomous director (programming) and awards director (business). During the build season the work is split up into different projects, and each has a student lead, but they don't have to be a director or captain. I think that this structure is pretty effective, we have 111 students in our team.

[BumblingBuilder]

2169 is currently going through a large restructuring of leadership roles. Our team has undergone multiple restructurings over the last four years, but the current one will be the biggest, at least from a student standpoint rather than a mentor/coach one.

For the last two years, however, we kept a similar leadership structure of:
3 captains (seniors, ideally from different department backgrounds)
3 Mechanical heads
1 Electrical head
1-2 Programming head(s)
1 CAD head
1 Strategy head
1 Business/Marketing head
1 Chairmans head
1 PR head
1 Media head
1 Spirit head
(Occasionally one person would fulfill multiple positions)

However, with the closing of the 2016 season, we added four new captain roles (the original three captain roles being renamed as FRC Captains) to more thoroughly oversee the programs we run and mentor in our school district:
Jr FLL Captain
FLL Captain
VEX Captain (our Middle School in-house program)
FTC Captain

The head positions for next year have yet to be determined by our mentors and captains, and the application for such positions were opened up to student input on new ideas for positions that could help further the goals of our team, so more new positions may very well be added soon.

This structure has generally been successful, but we're always looking for new skillsets people bring to the table and how they can be used in our team, and if necessary, make them a department to focus on a skillset we deem important to the team.

We have around 40 kids in FRC, but around 80 in Prior Lake High School robotics (FTC is treated as somewhat of a JV program), and our FTC kids are given opportunities to be trained in on FRC departments later in the school year and during the summer.

[abigailthefox]

We have 1-2 captains who oversee everything. They handle a lot of the logistical and higher-up stuff, and report directly to mentors. (1-2 because it varies from year to year. You can run with or without a co-captain.)

Beneath that, we have sub teams run by leads. Each lead has control over their own sub team except the safety lead. The safety lead does not have a team, she oversees activity by other sub teams, such as mechanical, and enforces safety rules (oftentimes the safety lead will work on another team, such as mechanical, and perform their safety duties alongside that).

The other sub teams are run by a lead, who is nominated and elected by team members in the spring before the season. Leads must be at least second-year members, and are elected before new recruits join for the upcoming season.

Admittedly, this system has failed for us. Our programming lead essentially abdicated this year, and the bulk of the programming duties were accepted by yours truly (who was not a programmer at any point prior to this). It can also create tensions among people who thought they deserved the position more than the person who got it (but that can happen in any kind of student election).

However, overall I would say we have had success. The biggest struggle is the uneven distribution of team members. If we have 20 people on mechanical, and 4 on programming, we begin to struggle with who will be able to accept lead positions.

[LCJ]

We don't have a very structured management/leadership structure.
Instead our team allows anyone to step up during the season and take initiative to be an informal "leader" of a sub-system/team.

Other than the sub-team leads we don't have captains or a president.

While it may seem like this will cause confusion and issues with coming up with decisions (which we definitely had some of), this open structure makes the leaders who step up accountable and more driven.

Many of the leaders are very active in the off-season and take up a leadership role while preparing the team for the season. This leads to a smooth transition into the season as the newer students see what makes some students qualified to be leaders.

[GeeTwo]

Our first five years we've had a "dynamic" structure, which essentially assigns leadership responsibility to those who have earned it. We've had one captain some years co-captains others. We have a leader for each "department" or build team, and occasionally some cross-functional positions like this year's "project manager" for the build. We've just switched our head coach and are working on a team manual, so we may proceed to a more formal system in coming years.

[bmoore]

Originally Posted by cscottm

Team 2502 has four captains, Two Business, and Two Engineering, We also have a variety of lead positions, such as marketing, fundraising, outreach, safety, strategy, CAD, programming, electrical and pneumatic, and awards.

We have tried many different systems, and they seem to change every year.

I am also from 2502. We are currently working on a team handbook that will contain descriptions and organizational charts of both student leadership roles and mentor leadership roles. Once that has been completed I will put it in this thread.

[dmelcer9]

We are trying a semi-new structure this year for a team of ~40 students.

There is the team president who oversees the team and is the face of the team. Below her is the VP Technical and VP Business. Technical is split up into Build, Design, and Controls (which itself is broken up into Electrical and Programming). Business is split up into general business (handles sponsorships, expenses), awards, outreach, and media (note that there are some blurred lines between the business groups).

Each group listed above has an officer, chosen by officers who are graduating seniors. The positions that are lower down on the hierarchy are for younger students. A few groups have co-officers, where two sophomores share the officer position (this is on a case-by-case basis).

[RoboChair]

Team Captain
Team Co-captain
__Mechanical Lead
____Mechanical Design Lead
____Mechanical Fabrication Lead
__Electrical Lead
__Robot Programming Lead
__App Programming Lead
__Business & Media Leads(2 people)
__Chairman's Lead

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by orangelight

Pages 6-18 from here
It works out pretty well for our 60 person team

This is a great team resource. Thanks for sharing.
We have something similar but not quite as detailed as yours...probably because we dont have 60 members in our program.