Your team's structure and organization

[coreyk]

Currently on the team there is about 33 students, 2 advisors, various mentors, and all of the parents. Our team is structured like a corporation, allowing for maximum organization within the team. When you view the structure of a corporation you think of CEO's, Officers, Departments, and more, which is exactly what we decided to use.

We have the CEO's of the corporation being the two advisors, followed by the three departments which include Animation, Manufacturing, and PR/Marketing. Under those specific areas are the main jobs of the department. For example, below Manufacturing there is the Construction, Programming, and Design of the Robot. Under PR/Marketing (Communications) we have Public Relations, Marketing, Sponsorship, Fundraising, Website, Chairman's Award, and the Newsletter. Seeded off of Animation is Sound, Animation, and Video. Members are placed, when joining the team in the department that best reflects their interests. Each of these departments has a student representative -- which may be one of the team officer's - President (Chairman), Vice President (Co-Chairman), Secretary, and Treasurer.

The Officers function as team leaders and are elected by the team through a basic voting process (nomination/paper ballet). The officers are given tasks based off of there role (ex. Treasurer handles financial data, Does Business Plan,etc.).

However, what differs us from other teams is that the departments are 100% student run - advisors/mentors/parents assist but do not complete any given project. We also require total student participation.

View our Team Structure Here

I hope this helps - contact me with any future questions.

-Corey
corey103@gmail.com

[Scott Chambliss]

Last year, our first, our team came together at the last second (quite literally) and we did not even think about forming any sort of structure to the team. All things considered, we did fairly well, but we only had about 12-13 people. This year, someone developed this complex, multi-tiered, branched system with ridiculus positions (really, we have a CEO, CFO, COO, and who knows what else!) It is not working, and nothing is getting done or communicated. I hope that we change it to the more popular, and functional, system of a few large sub-groups. This seems to be the best system, and the one that I would reccomend. Of course, this differs from team to team, but I would like to give it a try.

[vadyr]

Team 103 has three main divisions: Manufacturing, Animation, and PR/Marketing.

Manufactuiring consists of the construction of the robot and mock field, inventor, autocad work, programming, and getting everything ready for the competiton (the actual game part).

Animation consists of the 3ds max animation team, the video production team, and other cool projects we just pick up during the year.

PR/Marketing keeps our team's money in order, does the monthly newsletter, handles outreach and runs the rural support program., updates and constructs the website, and organizes team functions and fundraising.

Our team this year is about 30 people, with 2 mentors that teach at the school and another 4+ mentors that are out-of-school. We don't have any engineers working with us, but the mentors are hardcore dedicated. Check out the website and browse around for additional information. www.cybersonics.org good luck!

[coreyk]

Please Refer to previous 103 structure post found here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...049#post391049

[phrontist]

My org-chart may prove interesting:

[sciguy125]

We're in the process of restructuring. We tried anarchy but that only worked when the team was very small (<10 members). When it got bigger and we decided we wanted more structure, we tried democracy. That was a total failure. The biggest problem was that people were allowed to give input into things they had nothing to do with. ie, people who weren't going to be doing design work or other engineering voted in robot decisions. With tasks getting handed out to the community rather than individuals directly, it was unclear who was in charge of what. It proved to be very inefficient and troublesome. Democracy has been abandoned and popular voting for any decision is now frowned upon.

The new structure consists of 3 teirs with two branches: Engineering and Administration. Tier 1 is two people - one for each branch. These people are not actual workers, more like managers. They tell the people below them what needs to be done, but not how to do it. And, they aren't supposed to do any actual work, just distribute work and make sure that people are are doing their jobs. Tier 1 is only supposed to get overflow work (aside from their managerial duties). Tier 2 is the "sub-division" leaders. Each branch has been divided into several sub-divisions. One person heads each. Tier 1 and tier 2 are considered leadership positions. Teir 3 is everyone else, essentially the grunts. Each tier 2 leader has one or more teir 3 people working under them. The number of people in each teir 3 group is undefined, but it is intended that they choose a group and stay there. Tier 1 positions are appointed by Teir 0, the moderators. People interested in the positions have to submit a questionaire (sort of an informal application) and give a speech about why they would be good for the position. Teir 2 also has the same process, but the tier 1 leaders get some input to choose those who will be under them. Teir 3 is a free for all.

These are the tier 2 positions:

Engineering
Control Systems
Arm/Environmental Manipulator
Drivetrain/Chassis

Administration
Resource Management
Information Distribution
Marketing
Community Outreach
Website

A constitution of some sort still needs to be written up to describe specific protocol and duties for each position. However, the spirit of the system is that each person in teirs 1 and 2 will have the power/right to do their duties without undue interference from others. Tier 1 will have a limited (so far undetermined) amount of veto power over tier 2. This makes sure that nobody goes crazy and runs away with their power. Tier 0, of course, still has unlimited veto power over the entire hierarchy. With this power, tier 0 is still not supposed to act as part of the system above tier 1, just fix issues that might arise and pose a serious problem. But, because they are the moderators they will always have the power to do whatever they want. They can tell someone to stop playing with the yardstick, or they can shut the entire program down.

Each branch operates independently. Administration doesn't get to say what goes on the robot, Engineering doesn't get to say what goes in the pamphlets. This separation also holds between each of the tier 2 sub-divisions. A method of filing [i]grievances[i], however, is in the works. The idea is that you can tell someone that there is a problem, but not what to do about it (of course, if they feel the need, they can ask you what you think should happen). This prevents people from telling others how to do their jobs, or as what has happened before, taking over their job entirely.

All of this sounds very beaurocratic, but every detail has been put in place to fix problems that we've had. Democracy had to go away because it was too inefficient. There had to be a clearly defined structure to prevent people from trying to boss others around (unless they now have the explicit power to do so). Clearly defined positions now create liability. If something doesn't get done, we know who was in charge of it. As a side effect of all this, however, is that it solidifies the fact that the team is student run. To be cliche, this system is of the students, by the students, and for the students. Students created the system, they fill positions in the system, and it protects their power to be a student run team.

It was pointed out that the constitution (still in the works) is similar to the US Constitution. There is a separation of powers and each branch runs fairly autonomously. Some of the proposed clauses turned out to have a US Constitution equivalent. The whole purpose of it is to make sure that everyone gets along peacefully.

[SirLancelot]

Hmm....
On 1502 we have the basic five subgroups for the build: drivetrain, manipulation (like arms, etc.), programming, electronics, and support (tends to deal with all of the stuff not too important to the build of the robot but still crucial, like the cart/crate/promo.) The subteam heads have authority over and responsibility for the members of their specific group. We try to solve the majority of problems internally, and the subteam head can dictate to their team the way they want things to be done. Obviously, we consider the wishes of the team mebers. On top of this all there is a president, two vice presidents, a secretary, treasurer, and a herd of parent mentors and engineers. If a team member is having a specific problem with a mentor, we got the president to approach them to sort things out, as well as for authorizing any purchases. The president also officiates over all meetings, which tend to occour at least every two-three days. This helps us keep some semblence of order.
The entire build is led by the team with very helpful suggestions/advice from the engineers. They try their hardest to prevent us from screwing up, but son't actually do the work for us.
The parents arrange a food schedule, rotating each day, so that we don't starve. (they're wonderful...!)
For offseason, we elect heads for the the various segments of public relations and offseason events. So, we have kids in charge of the newsletter, website maintainence, offseason competitions, etc. We're also trying to get a newsletter to run consistently through the build, but I don't know how likely that'll be.
We've found our method to be very effective unless the students and mentors end up clashing over something.
In a nutshell, that's about it.

--Anna