Team Organization  Why? - The FIRST experience is much more than just building a robot and will overwhelm a team without an effective structure  When? - Immediately after the Championship competition for veteran teams and no later than October for rookie teams  Who? - The process must be led by teachers, coaches & engineers but the students should make the decisions as they will be responsible for execution 2002

Team Organization  Individual Tasks  Sub Groupings  Primary Groupings / Task Selection  Team Building  Team Tasks  Timing  Team Networking

Individual Tasks  Break down each facet of the FIRST experience to the finest possible detail (ie., tool inventory/maintenance, in-school fund raising, animation storyboard art)  Include everything including engineer & teacher administrative tasks  The more complete the analysis, the more effective the organization

Sub Groupings  Go through list & combine tasks in logical sub-groups ( ie. Chassis construction, sales/raffle fund raising, animation scripting)  Establish project leaders for each of the sub-groups (see handout #1 on leadership)  Sub-group leaders agree to assume full responsibility for all sub group tasks  Establish level of discomfort as sub- group leadership is accepted

Task Selection  Prioritize sub groups by level of team interest ( ie. candy sales/raffle fund raising does not have as much energy as soliciting additional sponsors for additional funding)  Based upon level of discomfort as to tasks vs. resources start deleting lowest priority tasks  Conduct reality check on deleted tasks ( ie. Without candy sales/raffle fund raising, team can only attend one regional, but second regional is high priority on task list)

Primary Groupings  Combine sub-groups into primary groups ( ie.structural build, fund raising, animation)  Establish Team Leaders to each primary group (see handout #1 on leadership)  Team Leaders accept full responsibility for ALL tasks in their primary grouping

Team Building  Weekly robotics team meetings after school, especially fall semester - Begin each meeting with a team building activity 5-20 min - Have a student take minutes and use them to track progres - Introduce "stress" projects to get the team working together  Participate in off-season competition - Ford VEV “Sweet Repeat” - Chief Delphi Invitational  Full team fund raising projects  Team Building sources: - The Complete Idiot’s guide to Team Building, Arthur R. Pell, PhD - Meetings: Do’s and Don’ts, Sharon M. Lippincott

Team Tasks  Establish big picture objectives which need to be addressed by the entire team (ie. competition strategy)  Develop a plan on how to attack each of the large scale tasks (ie. each team member develop a rough robot design with sketches which will complete their concept of the game objectives)  Stick to the plan!!!!!

TimingTiming  Develop a big picture time line  Build a detailed chart to track individual tasks (see handout #2 – MS Project Gantt Chart)  Review the detailed chart at weekly (minimum) team meetings  Consider having a designated deadline coordinator

Team Networking  Contact all teams in the general vicinity and solicit interest. Schedule an inter- team meeting  Develop a list of wants that could be more easily achieved by an alliance of teams (ie. full playing field)  Go through the same task organization process to achieve these mutual wants as was done at the team level

Team Networking Goals  Promote the cooperative, sharing spirit of FIRST  Inspire each other at a team level  Develop a rapport with other teams that will carry over to the competition stage

Final Thought “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm” Winston Churchill

Handout #1 – A few tips to consider when establishing sub-group and primary group leaders

Handout #2 – This is a sample of MS Project Gantt chart with one of the primary groups expanded