Team Structure Evolution

Our team structure underwent some evolution and improvements over the course of the project. Initially, we were given a shared google drive and slack group before our first meeting and decided these resources would be good for our team. We also wanted a way to schedule tasks and deliverables and decided early on to use Trello solely for this. This worked well although there was sometimes when it was difficult to keep up with there the information everybody needed was kept. more on this later.

Before deciding on a project, our team structure consisted of a note taker that was elected before the start of each meeting, our wonderful advisor (Prof. B. Utter), and everyone else. We knew that defining and using a more robust structure would benefit the team. However, it took us the best part of four weeks to decide on a project and then determine what the team structure would look like. By week five of the project, we had defined twelve roles and decided that we would change roles each week to give everyone the chance to learn and develop each position. Everyone was responsible for signing up for a different role each week at least two weeks in advance of that week commencing.

After deciding on a project and delving into it further as a team, we decided to split our group into four sub-teams. There would be a team responsible for the design and functionality of, Buoyancy, Legs, Swim, and Treads respectively. These teams of three students were to meet outside of the larger group meeting bringing progress through larger team deliverables to the team meetings. During the creation of these teams, we decided to have someone responsible for feeding back information to the team at whole team meetings. This role was called the ‘Sub-team reporter’.

It wasn’t long before we added another role. The team recognized a need to assure the quality and consistency between deliverables were kept up to our HARTT’s standards, and the quality control role was born on week eight. They ensured style and similarity between subteam reports and presentations and solidified the standard of work expected for each deliverable. We maintained these roles for the remainder of the fall 21 semester.

Upon returning for the spring 22 semester, we made some changes to our team structure and the rotating roles we had before. Initially, we removed and combined some roles we felt were unnecessary or insufficient. And then, after discussing the pros and cons of rotating roles, we decided to keep the rotating roles but no longer had the requirement to sign up for a different role meaning that the same person could sign up for the same role as much as they wanted. If anyone else also wanted to take on the same role it was deemed acceptable to engage them in a discussion to come to a solution.

Reflecting on the fall semester, it was clear to the team that completing tasks and staying on track and up to date with each sub-team was difficult. After a discussion on what we thought we could do to improve, the weekly meeting structure was changed. For the spring semester, our weekly meeting schedule was as follows. Monday meetings were focused on budget updates, goal setting, and team-level challenges for the week. Tuesday lab sessions were dedicated to subteam work. Wednesday meetings were for schedule and task updates, with buffer time to spare for further discussion topics relevant to the whole team.

With that, the team decided to move away from Trello and elected to use a google spreadsheet in which everyone would enter information on the tasks they were responsible for. Each week we would go through the tasks and update the team on our progress. The spreadsheet was used to create and update a Gantt chart (avaliable here) that was used by the team as a tool to visualize where we were at and plan what we had to do to reach our goals. The structure change in our second semester was significant and enabled us to build on what we accomplished in the first semester.

In the future, the team would continue to update and introduce refinements to the team’s structure to continue to allow the team to operate as effectively and efficiently as we can. Now that sub-functions have already been combined, it makes sense to move away from four subteams and create one team for land and water movement respectively. This is because there are now many more integration design choices that affect both sub-teams in each of the two new suggested land and water teams.