sub-team tension???

[Darkswordsmith]

Hi guys, so this is a rather random poll, but...is there any inter-sub-team tension between your teams? For example, the programming team wanting to program something the mechanical team refuses to build or the electrical team fights the mechanical team for time to work on the robot?

[David55]

lots of that stuff
our programming team has been waiting 3 days for the electrical team to put on their electronics board on the finished robot
They are always missing some type of screw or wire

[crazykid234]

I think there will enevitably be some tension whenever there is a slow down with one sub team. For example, if it takes longer to make a CAD drawing of a subsystem then it does to make it, then of course manufacturing will get tense and slowed down, which leads to electronics and subsequently to programming. It's one huge domino set. You can't avoid it, it is almost a certainty that one part of the team will work slower than other sub-teams, leading to the others getting tense. Just accept that it will happen, and hopefully the other members of the team have the patience to deal with it when it happens.
(This is not just your team, this happens on all teams!)

[pez1959]

We avoided most of the electrical/mechanical problems by building the electronics board one we knew roughly how big it was and what we needed on it. While the elec ugys were building the board, the mech guys were doing CAD. Suprisingly, when the mech guys had built it and were ready to mout the elec board, the elec guys had finished building, and the programmer had already got it mosly programmed.

That system worked very well for us, and it may be something to consider next year.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

There is always tension between sub-teams. FIRST wants the teams to have real world experiance, tension between subgroups is a normal part of engineering, especially when there is a hard deadline (like the ship deadline in FIRST). How we deal with that tension will say a lot about how well you will do in a team enviroment (most engineering is a team enviroment) in the real world.

One of the best tools to combat this tension is communication. Have regular design reviews. Make sure everyone knows the schedule. Make sure everyone knows the full impact of any delays. If your subteam cannot be working on the robot because another subteam is delayed, ask what you can do to help.

And above all else, remember, you win or lose as a team. You succeed or fail as a team. So anything you can do to help the team, even if its not working directly with your sub team, will contribute to the success of the entire team.

[phrontist]

I am a one man electrical/programming team. I fight with myself all the time, and I'm constantly angry at myself for not having the systems in place I need to test my code.

[dhitchco]

During build season, the sub-teams tend to go off and "do their own thing" and only interact when they need to (e.g. electrical, mechanical....and nobody pay attention to the "softer" sub-teams such as spirit, animation, awards, etc).

So, it's always fun to dedicate one night of non-work for a "spirit" night to have fun team awards, photo opportunities, etc just as a breather.

Just be thankful that this is indeed a limited six-week project. If it was the real world corporate stylie, we'd be doing this 24/7/365...........

[Alan Anderson]

We don't seem to have a lot of tension between the subteams. That's probably because the electrical group is taking a lot of its cues from the software group, and because I (as the software mentor) am paying very close attention to the mechanical group's occasional changes in what motors and actuators they decide to use. If there were less communication going on, there would be a lot more tension.

We do have a lot of general tension in the team as a whole, but with less than two weeks until ship date that's to be expected.

[Dillon Compton]

Originally Posted by phrontist

I am a one man electrical/programming team. I fight with myself all the time, and I'm constantly angry at myself for not having the systems in place I need to test my code.

I absolutely understand what you mean, and I am actually serious.

I also help build; a result is that I get all the annoyance of electrical and programming with mechanical, and I cant even complain because I'm part of the build team!

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by phrontist

I am a one man electrical/programming team. I fight with myself all the time, and I'm constantly angry at myself for not having the systems in place I need to test my code.

The problem here is obvious: lack of communication!

The most successful people you see in a situation like yours are the ones who are constantly talking to themselves :^)

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

The communication between our sub-teams has been good this year because of one thing: a huge, detailed master plan sheet that is available to everybody from every sub-team. I can look at it and see what every other team is doing, and as a scout, I find that very useful.

For those of you who are bothered by "softer" sub-teams, you have even more reason to adapt a master schedule. Chairman's award people who want quotes, or awards people who want info, do not like bothering you when you're busy. At least as a Chairman's person I don't like to. Seeing what every sub-team is doing makes it easier to catch them during a downtime, or to check on them and ask when they'll be available after a task.

[Josh Murphy]

our communication is realitive good but sometimes there are more important things that have to be done at a certain time and it has to be understanding and wait until the right time. I am helping our video team right now because i am the one who did most of it last year and the new team is all rookies so i am helping them do the video for the hall of fame. we have to fight our way into certain rooms in order to get it done and we have a tight schedule and everyone is wanting it done, but a couple of weeks ago we were going to start filming and the pit crew/ build team said we are going in that room and that was at 12:00 and they did not go in there until 3:00 so we could of had at least a 3 hour lead but it is all a communication time and timing so it is understandable.

[114gopher]

There will always be some sort of tension, one group wants this done, one group wants this, and just not enough people/resources to get it done. I cannot stress the importance of communication in order to help alleviate (not solve, for this problem will always exist) this issue. We did have one issue this year where one of our groups flat out refused to do something for one of the other groups (change frame design a bit), which caused quite a bit of stress. We managed to figure out a way to work around it, but sometimes you need a central authority (Capitan/mentor/whoever) to have a talk with the parties involved, and help them to figure it out. All too often it is something silly like, "I didn't know that was/wasn't possible."
Don't stress though, it happens to everyone.

[StephLee]

Oh, definately some tension this year. Our programmers wanted to try castors this year, and our build team was dead against it...eventually, we agreed to try them, and now we're testing them. We'll make a decision soon, hopefully; but more importantly, since we tried them everyone should be happy.

[Marcel]

Usually we put our ideas together and come up with what we want before we start building, programming or anything. So we've never had aqny problems, of course this year we had a small problem, when some of us wanted to shoot to the top, others to the bottom, and some hybrid. We ended up working from the bottom to the top. So now we have a great shooter and a pretty sweet design for the chassis. But after that no real problems.