team hierarchy

[Andrew]

We tried getting organized and having sub-groups, etc in our first year. It just didn't work. We have been less organized since. We are sort of migrating in a more organized direction. However, I cannot see us ever getting to the "Org Chart" stage again.

We are a "Task Oriented" organization. We have multi-skilled people and we generally flex to the crisis point.

We have a big board of tasks. We add tasks as they arise throughout the build phase. We prioritize tasks and assign them based on urgency. Usually team members volunteer for tasks; however, their are times when I assign them (ie a critical task which may be onerous). Their are always deadlines associated with each task.

When a critical task slips past the deadline, I will discuss with the responsible party. We have a variety of responses, such as getting help, reassigning, or (in extreme cases) applying motivational therapy.

The super-hyper-"the team fails if it doesn't get done" tasks are either assumed by my wife (Madam Presidente) or myself (El Presidente).

On the robot design, we usually have one to four designers. We now model everything in Pro/Engineer and keep all models and assemblies on the server and keep them updated as the design changes. Resource allocation is done by an informal discussion. Once a resource is allocated, the designer usually squirrels that part away.

The younger designers usually don't communicate their decisions to everyone. However, after the first mistake, the designers are usually very up front about communicating constantly the state of the design.

The good thing about modeling your entire robot is that, as you go along, you can keep track of the weight and space constraints.

As we construct, we have a few people who are permitted into the machine shop. These people have interacted with the mentors through the Fall semester and we generally have developed working relationships and know how to communicate.

As people show up, they pick someone who looks like he knows what he is doing and find out what need to be made next. We sort of build by a first come/first served basis. Likewise, once the shop is full, the next people handle assembly tasks.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally posted by M. Krass
Of course, if you have a team of unmotivated students who aren't willing to own up to their responsibilities, this entire system could also be a spectacular disaster.

Somehow, I get the feeling that's what would happen if 201 tried it... We only had about 7 or 8 students that were really motivated out of a team of 20.

[Ryan Foley]

M.-

Thanks for the idea, but at the moment I agree with Jeff. Your idis a good one, but I think it would be overkill for a team the size of mine.

its a great idea for much larger teams though.

[Kristina]

Here's what we did kind of going off of M's idea but modified to suit our smaller team. Tried and tested and it works pretty well.

It's the same egalitarian feel with the point people but there are subcommittees. At the beginning of the year everyone would write down which group(s) they felt they were strongest in and had the most desire to work in. Leaders were appointed for the larger groups and emerged naturally in others. Thus, we had a leader for each group that represented the group. At the beginning of each class day each leader would go around telling everyone else what they were working on and what they needed from other groups. All of this was written on a huge blackboard that was divided up into groups and due dates were written by each task. Basically, the leaders (which was a group of 5-6 people I believe) came up with the tasks and people would decide how much involvement they wanted to give and what they could do. Leaders in each group weren't there to designate but rather to make sure that people signed up for what they were comfortable with doing, making sure people worked, and kept a mental record of what everyone was doing. As each task was completed, it was simply checked off.

This helped immensely when we couldn't afford pay for everyone's travel. Thus, the section leaders knew who did what for their group and how much work they put in. I think it worked well because there was enough flexibility so that if someone wanted to work in more than one group they could according to their abilities but there was always a leader to make sure that all the work needed for the group was done and he/she could also communicate with the rest of the team with what needed the group needed.

[ebmonon36]

We have a lead teacher, student captain, a lead engineer in charge of overseeing the teams.
In each of our sub-teams, we have a lead engineer and a lead student with 3-4 people under them. As stated earlier if leadership isn't that great, then the whole group collapses. This happened to a couple sub-groups and others had to pick up the slack later. As for animation team we had me as the lead (split time between animation and drive train) and my assistant who did measurements and took pics for textures. We had no adult mentor for animation.

[Ryan Foley]

ebmonon36:
what subteams do you have?

[ebmonon36]

we had a drive train team, website-promo, programming, the wing team, and a team that worked on our ramp.
Our drive team was chosen the last two weeks before ship and we had little time to drive before ship.
Eric