I am the new captain of our robotics team and we have trouble trying to give people things to do even when there is a ton of work to do. We got a ton of new freshman this year (thank god) but i am having trouble organizing them. I am no Programing buff by any stretch of the imagination, but has anybody tried to program some sort of team management system for their own team?
I have always just used a TO-DO list and manually assigned work to people I know that can do a quality job on the task. It would be interesting to write something quick with PHP and MySQL were you could add task, people could have talents (wiring, programing, CAD, etc) and you could manually assign jobs or even have it do it automatically. It would be an interesting project to see how it works.
Words of warning: Beware the human element. When you try to micromanage people, you’ll be amazed how much less work they’ll do. No matter how perfect your organization, there will always be people who don’t follow or (worse) resent the system.
My advice:
Divide the kids up by what their talents are (programming, mechanical, electrical, etc) and assign a leader to each subteam. Then delegate tasks to the subteam leaders, who can assign tasks to their subteam members. That way the organization is spread out over several people, each an expert in their area and each able to oversee their own tasks to completion.
ya thats defanatly what we do the only problem is keeping track of attendance and contact info. Actually today i gave out worksheets with some questions about interests and abilities they are supposed to email me answers so that i don’t need to decipher handwriting for email addresses.
I was more wondering if someone with better programing skills than i had ever tried to combine attendance info and contact information.
We fortunately have a Boosterz team (parents) who handle this for us. At the first meeting, everyone fills out a info sheet. This is entered into a spreadsheet that also records attendance. We have a large attendance poster made, and at every meeting the students check off their name at the beginning of the meeting. The master spreadsheet is updated periodically.
Attendance is important because we have a rule that if you can’t make at least 70% of the meetings (baring extraordinary circumstances) you are kicked off the team. And if a student isn’t pulling their weight, after being talked to and given several chances to improve, they are also off the team. Yes, we are fortunate that we have a large team and can afford to do this, but in my opinion being on a FIRST team should be a privilege, not a given. If you want the rewards you have to work for them.
attendance -
the old fashioned way in this area works for our team - we have a 3 ring notebook in the classroom and each student has an attendance page. They are responsible for signing themselves in and out each day that they come. No one is allowed to sign in or out another team member, it is the student’s responsibility. Initially, there may be those who challenge the system, as has been stated, but the team is really good at modeling appropriate team behavior to each other and the ones who resist following the team set-up/rules, learn pretty quick that they will lose out. Travel privileges are gained through the documentation. Our teacher keeps track of the documentation.
We ask students and parents to sign up for their email blasts and also for the forums in the team website. Again, they will learn quickly that communication happens through those channels and they’ll miss out if they don’t comply. We use the forums/website and the yahoogroups for much of the team management aspect of the team.
Divide and conquer! We divide up the team into several sub-teams. We have sub-teams like Marketing (buttons, banners, shirts, etc), Construction (Field elements, crate, pit, etc), Electrical, Mechanical, logistics (lodging, food, meeting space, etc). The list goes on. We assign a leader in each of these areas and get them started. First thing I would suggest is training specialized to each group. Teach the newbees about the IFI electrical system, the programmers about the IDE, the mechanical guys how to use Inventor, etc.
We’re instituting a new system this year for 254 and 1868 (they also work in our lab).
We have a barcode scanning system that we purchased, to keep track of who is in our lab, and where all our tools are.
We will be setting up a scanner at the door, and all students will be required to scan their student ID cards upon entry and exit (parents and mentors will receive their own ID cards).
We will also be barcoding all power tools, and other tools deemed easily misplaced and creating a toolcrib to keep all tools in. Whenever anyone wants to use a tool, they have to scan it out. The system will check to see if they have the appropriate training to use whatever tool they want to check out, and if so check it out to them. They are then responsible for scanning it back in when they are done.
We’ve had quite a few problems in the past with losing tools, or not being able to find them because they either don’t have a proper home, or never get put back in that home. With this new system we should be able to keep track of who tends to forget to put back what tools, as well as easily finding out when/where any tools may have been lost or damaged.
In addition we’re hoping to figure out a way to have it randomly assign everyone a cleanup task when they enter the building each day, so that we can keep more clean/organized 
It was a somewhat significant cost to purchase, but we’re pretty sure the benefit of knowing where our tools are at all times (and as a result not having to buy new ones because they got lost), and having accurate counts on the number of people in our lab, and the frequency of their visits will be worth it
As most of the other replies have seemed to say, Team 393 also divides up into subteams:
Manufacturing
Programming/Wiring
CAD
Animation
Web
Outreach
Chairman’s
Right now, we’ve had to combine Web/Outreach/Chairman’s as I am the only one that really has experience with these areas that has come back this year, but that is the glory of this system. Combining and further dividing is simple. For example, last season, we had A LOT of Manufacturing people. We simply divided it into two Manufacturing teams and gave them different tasks to work on in regards to different parts of the robot.
As far as contact info goes, we appoint a leader to each subteam, and that leader is in charge of contacting said team. It’s kind of a phone tree system. Our mentors call the subteam leaders who, in turn, call their teammates. It seems to work out rather well for us. Maybe it could work for you.
Hope this helped.
Danielle Hurley
Team 393
Website/Chairman’s
Try to organize them first in something not related to the work of the team, like group activites, team-work games and stuff like that!