How is your team structured?

[5113sean]

Our team is actually pretty structured but it also works off natural leadership. Over the summer, everyone gets to know each other and we complete some small projects, so by pre-season, we are pretty much ready to vote on leadership. We formally vote on president (this past year resulted in a tie, leading to two co-presidents, or, as was theme, a king and a queen), a marketing lead, a mechanical lead, a software lead, and an integration and safety lead. Any ties or near ties result in shared positions.

In the beginning of the year, new students are encouraged to build defenses to learn about tools and safety.

Mechanical is divided into subteams which depend on the game each year. This year, we had a chassis team, an arm team, and a shooter team. Each subteam has an informal leader.

Software is based on skill so those with more skill generally teach the new students and therefore have more code to write.

Electrical has a lead, but generally the group is small so the don't necessarily need subgroups.

Integration is split into integration and safety. Integration has a secretary and a leader for each award application. There are also ambassadors from integration that communicate back and forth between the other groups. Safety is headed by the safety captain.

Marketing is broken up by projects. Generally, the person who came up with the idea is the head of the project unless they feel more comfortable with someone else in charge. There is also a head for communication with the school board and our sponsors.

A lot of our positions overlap (for example, one person would take the responsibility for multiple award applications), but it seems to work. There's a lot less confusion overall and we were able to build a pretty darn good bot this year.