Talk:Team structure

Comments are embedded below. One thing that I was trying to do was try to do some restructure on the teams, and to try to create some new synergy. That why a focus on tasks, not functions. One of my personal goals in Program Management is to create a better schedule / work tasking system to better utilize the (limited) resources we have. On a given evening we have students looking for things to do; more smaller teams can elicit a bigger sense of ownership and accountability.

Siri Maley wrote

Usually, in practice, the teams are sorted by function, not by task. Since most members specialize in a function(s) rather than a task. For example, the though the drive and game (manipulator) tasks are usually somewhat distinct in work, they're both done by almost exactly the same members--those usually called the mechanical team (sub-team).

From prior seasons a bottle neck has been "we can't start on the {game manipulator} the base is not done. Last year was much better since the base design was quickly formed and a group attacked construction. But the hopper / shooter / etc creation was mired by not having a team focused on it until much later (and having only one Clem)

The game play team description though, is written to encompass three teams in practice: carpentry, scouting, and the drive team. The carpentry team does the practice field and expands to do the crate when needed. Scouting is an entirely seperate team with seperate staffing and oversight. (It was really structured and everything. Glad everyone noticed.) Driver selection and training is again an even more removed function, falling under the drive team (which includes human players).

Foster

I split the game practice field and the crate from each other for a specific reason, to increase the amount of concurrent activity we can have in the shop. Once the overall design of the robot is complete (sometime week 2) and final measurements are ready (late week 3) the crate can be constructed. It can move in the build process as its own entity and can be tracked. I'm not being dismissive of the work that Faith, Matt R and others did creating the crate in the last two weeks, but we can reduce the amount of stress if this has it's own focus group. On the other hand, if we build the "Wonder Crate (tm)" this fall, then crate construction during build season will be limited to the construction of internal supports for the specific robot.

Foster

I included Scouting (which WAS much better this year) into the drive team since the drive team depends on the scouting and that while driving is considered a glam job, scouting is not, combining them may make scouting more desirable.

Siri

Missed the CAD team.

Foster

Good point, and the Animation Team needs to be in the Art group.

Siri

Some grammar and capitalization inconsistencies. I went with lowercase for the adjective as well (mechanical team, not Mechanical team) as you did in the first paragraph, though I'm not sure I'm convinced that way.

Foster

I'll fix that as we go along, I wanted to get a strawperson document out there to get this kind of commentary.

Siri

The specialization advice I included is what Sab used to tell me. (We don't necessarily have to stick with it--may be an important point of discussion, actually.)

Foster

It actually was the point of the discussion, what has worked, what isn't working, how can we fine tune.