Project Organization

The team structure was organized in various categories: team leader, assistant team leader, subteam leader/individual roles, copy editor, budget team, scribe team, sprint/schedule manager, and technical shop liaison. Outside of these roles, the team was split up into 3 groups: the propulsion team, the electrical mechanical integration team, and the effort sensing team. Each member of the wheelchair team held a position in their subteam as well as in the main group. Our team charter, which can be found in Appendix C, states that there was a team leader who led the team in weekly meetings, created and followed the agenda for the upcoming meeting, and made sure that the team was on schedule. The assistant leader ran the meeting if the team leader could not or if the group was getting off task. The subteam leaders were in charge of their respective group since there was a subteam leader for each category during the project. They were responsible for making sure their team reached their deadlines on time. The budget leader interacted with Colt Houser who was in charge of purchasing and maintaining a spreadsheet that tracks purchases. They also made sure that we had a budget and we would follow the budget we created. The scribe team was in charge of recording minutes for each meeting. The technical shop liaison was in charge of revising engineering drawings and bringing materials to and from the shop. The copy editor would compile/assemble reports, finalize them, and then submit the reports. There was also an IRB team that was in charge of submitting and finalizing the survey/interview documents. These documents were distributed to participants in the form of surveys and interviews, along with consent and debriefing forms. The individual roles within the subteams were described as secondary roles to their roles with the team. 

For the duration of the whole class, the team leader was Charlotte Sullivan. She took over this role after Professor Utter led the team for about two weeks. The scribe team was composed of Katie Rice, Charlotte Sullivan, and Nicole Stanec. There were multiple people interested in this position, so a team was created to prevent team members from becoming overworked. The budget team was Carolyn Pye, Katie Rice, and Emily Eng. Nicole Stanec was the technical shop liaison, and the copy editors rotated with each report. Emily Eng and Carolyn Pye were a part of the IRB team and were working with Professor Nees and Professor Vinchur. The first copy editors were Charlotte and Nicole, Emily and Drew were the next pair, and Carolyn and Katie were the most recent copy editors. Check-ins also occurred frequently to ensure that people had a balanced workload and no one felt overworked or like they were not contributing enough to the team. 

Within the subteams, each member of the class had a position. The effort sensing team was composed of Nick Moosic and Drew Freeland. They were in charge of creating the effort sensor for the wheelchair. The propulsion team had Charlotte Sullivan, Nicole Stanec, Katie Rice, and Geoffrey Toth. This team was working on the propulsion aspect for the wheelchair as seen in Figure 5 of Section 5.2.1. The Electro-mechanical team was Emily Eng, Carolyn Pye, and Matt Urban. This team was responsible for steering and electrical integration for the entire system. Within the electro-mechanical integration team, Carolyn was the subteam leader, Emily was the circuit manager, and Matt was the CAD manager. For the effort sensing group, Nick was in charge of the 9 Degrees of Freedom sensor and Drew dealt with the strain gauges. In the propulsion group, Nicole was the subteam leader and each member had aspects in which they focused. Charlotte was in charge of the ISO information, wheel, hitch, torque transmitter, spring attachment, and braking. Katie was responsible for the motors, attachment, lifting mechanism and the subteam budget. Geoffrey was in charge of the batteries. Nicole was in charge of the transmission, and transmission housing. All of these teams were integrated with one another, so although everyone had a designated team, there was frequent collaboration on all aspects of the project. There was frequent communication among the team to ensure that all aspects of the project were covered. Table 2 shows all the positions held by each member of the team.  

Table 2: Positions Held by Each Team Member

Members of the team were expected to maintain a level of professionalism and respect. The benefit of the doubt was given to everyone and set up the team’s success. Each person was held accountable and held each other accountable. Communication was the key to success. In order to have open communication, all members were expected to be at meetings and let everyone know if they would not be attending. Members were conscious of the way they interacted with one another and remembered to be open and respectful. This team cannot have performed its best work without everyone in the team working their hardest. Since everyone gave it their all, the team succeeded.