Team Member Accountability

[Jon Stratis]

So, what's the end goal here? What are you trying to accomplish by tracking what people do? That will help guide you towards an appropriate level of tracking.

For example, if you want to know who to recognize for different things (either internally at a team banquet or externally in a school yearbook or announcements) then you'll need much more detailed notes. On the other hand, if you just want attendance hours to determine who travels or letters, you need a lot less detail.

I find detailed work logs to be a little over the top, personally. Different people are going to want to work on different parts of the team - how do you measure work CADing part of the robot against work building it, against work programming it, against work on Chairman's?

My team does track attendance numbers, on the assumption that if you show up then you're working (which is mostly true, if your team leadership makes sure it is). Those attendance numbers then go into travel and lettering requirements.

Part of our lettering requirements is for each student to take charge of some sort of project with the team. We don't really care what it is, so long as it matches their experience level with the team - a senior that's been on the team for 4 years is going to do something a little more in depth than a freshman. They have to come up with some documentation along the way (project proposal, timeline, checkpoints, and a summary about what they learned) as well. The point here isn't a detailed work log for every student, it's to expose them to project management concepts and make them think about how impacts to schedule and scope affect the project - important engineering concepts. And in the end, we want them leaving the team with a portfolio of what they accomplished that they can take to college interviews to proudly display and talk about.