Team Rules

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Mew187

My FRC team is having our first team meeting tomorrow and I wanted to have some basic rules to give to members as a starting point. So I want to know, what rules or guild lines does your team have? What worked and what didn't work for you?

so far I have:
1. We only have six weeks to design, build, program and test our robot. This must be your #1 commitment.
2. You must focus at all meetings.
3. School and homework have to be a priority, if you need any help just ask. If your grades start to slide you will be put on probation.
4. You need to have a minimum number of hours in to travel with the team.(haven't decided number yet)

any suggestions would really help, Thanks!

Nice rule, but be careful not to scare people. I find that after people stick it out for one season, they get hooked and are more dedicated in the next season. . The FIRST season is always the hardest (pun intended). :d.

[ATannahill]

#1 thing to be said, Put #3 before #1 and remove #1 from the current #1 which will become #2

1. School and homework have to be a priority, if you need any help just ask. If your grades start to slide you will be put on probation.
2.  We only have six weeks to design, build, program and test our robot.
3. You must focus at all meetings.
4. You need to have a minimum number of hours in to travel with the team.(haven't decided number yet)

If that is confusing pm me or post here.

[Beth Sweet]

The link to our team handbook is below, it's kinda our compilation of 4 years of knowledge, so you may find it helpful.

http://team1504.com/media/documents/...4_handbook.pdf

Good luck, and welcome to FIRST!

[EricH]

I don't have any rule suggestions, but I do have suggestions:

#1, get parents involved. You never know what they'll have to contribute. Anything works, from meals to mentors
#2, Safety first. Stress that. I can't stress it enough.
#3, Read the manual. Everyone. The whole thing. Once. Have a rules guru who has it memorized. Have a second rules guru for the Q&A.
#4, make sure that team roles are defined clearly before the season. This causes more friction than a lack of a key bearing.

And in general, see the CD whitepapers and any other team handbooks, etc. that you want. Take the best ideas and adapt them to your team.

[Tom I]

On behalf of Team 811, welcome to the FIRST community!!

Good rules! School should come before FIRST. Safety is critical!! My brother actually had a bad accident because our safty regulations were not respected as well as they should have been. As for the hours dedication, I've personally gone on record for 8 days, 9 hours of time purely spent at our FIRST BASE!!! I hope you have members as crazy as I am, but obviously not everyone wants to/can do this! I'd say time measurements are good for general records, but if someone cannot come as often as they'd like, but they're productive for the time they do attend, and they're a significant member of the team, they should not be penalized because they could not make it as often as others, especially if these others are not as productive as they are.

This is a link to our team's Manual... it's 5-6? years in the making, and it contains basically EVERYTHING! take a look, use it as a reference if you want!
http://www.team811.com/files/download.php?id=5

Also, something else that Team 811 does is it has a Declaration of Membership... basically this is a formal document listing all the team goals and rules, and everyone signs this sheet, stating that they intend to follow and respect these rules to the best of their ability... this really gives perspective to the whole "team" environment. Sorry I dont have a link for this! but feel free to take a look around our site in general!
http://www.team811.com/index.php

Good Luck!!!