Team Size II

[ethanL007]

How well has everyones team held up? We operating with a team of 5 senior MEs. The last few weeks we had some juniors interested in the project who helped sand and paint stuff, but we got the car built and running with 5.

We started with 9 senior MEs and a few other underclassmen (about 12 for the total team), but as the work began our membership plummeted. So we are at 40% of our original team size.

This is our first year and I think having a complete car to take out every once and a while next year to keep everyone reminded why we are doing this would be a benefit.

I am curious how other teams have fared this year in this regard. I am starting to organize next years team, and I am looking for some insight as to how the larger teams retain people.

[ethanL007]

How well has everyones team held up? We operating with a team of 5 senior MEs. The last few weeks we had some juniors interested in the project who helped sand and paint stuff, but we got the car built and running with 5.

We started with 9 senior MEs and a few other underclassmen (about 12 for the total team), but as the work began our membership plummeted. So we are at 40% of our original team size.

This is our first year and I think having a complete car to take out every once and a while next year to keep everyone reminded why we are doing this would be a benefit.

I am curious how other teams have fared this year in this regard. I am starting to organize next years team, and I am looking for some insight as to how the larger teams retain people.

[ReadySetGo]

Well that sounds about right. We had a good 15-16 people in the beginning of the semester that came to meetings. Slowly some would flop off because they couldnt hang with midterms and working on the car.

So now we have a pretty good core of 9. We arent too big of an engineering school so thats probably why our numbers arent that high.

I think if you had a killer faculty advisor, the team will survive even when you guys are gone. Just make sure you assign tasks to new people or else they'll think they are just wasting their time comming to meetings and not doing anything. Thats the main problem we had. We were so far along, it would be really really hard for a newbie to catch on to things unless they were really really interested and didnt care if there job was to change the oil and clean the spark plugs.

[Michael Jones]

We're bringing 41, of which 16 are graduating and we can expect another 4-5 moving on to other things next year. This is pretty low turnover for us - we're usually in the 50-66% range. Part of the problem with the 2003 team was very high turnover from 2002 - 66%, with a lot of excellent talent graduating and/or moving on to other projects and being only tangentially related to the team.

Within this, there is certainly a core/periphery phenomenon. While it would be nice to have all 41 people equally involved, in practice this is near impossible. We have about 10-12 people who are reliably hardcore, 20-25 people who are committed to their particular projects and limited involvement otherwise, and thankfully very few people who pose problems with being less than committed in their work, and enough people to pick up the slack in most areas should they be.

It's actually been a very smoothly functioning group this year, which is a pleasant change of pace from the last two. 2002 was very talented but socially problematic on numerous fronts, and 2003 was a very green group with an insufficient number of really hardcore people and a precipitous drop in talent after that.

Didn't help much that the two main hardcore folk last year were team leaders who, by virtue of their leadership style, would be inclined to do everything, leaving very little chance for the rest of the team to pick up the slack. This works in the short term if they're not burned out by it - but by the end, they were, I think.

I'm hoping to have preliminary analysis of team dynamics done for competition (I'm doing my dissertation on the topic) and of course would be interested in learning more about everyone else's experiences and sharing what I've learned here.

One note on that: peripheral members are more useful than you might think. While the hardcore people get more respect and rightfully steer the organization, people willing to put in half the time but do so reliably and pick up specific tasks take a great deal of stress off the hardcore folk if their contributions are structured and managed properly.

[ethanL007]

Michael,

I would like very much to read your dissertation, if you make it available. My email address is elessard@unh.edu, if you are so inclined.

[Michael Jones]

When it's available, I'll certainly send it out for comment. Should be sometime in the next couple of months - collecting data right now, hope to have some preliminary analysis done for competition.

It's been a tough slog getting through for a variety of reasons (e.g., my advisor being terminated, my department nearly falling apart, my being on the edge of just quitting outright because of all that, my wasting too much time playing with cars... ) but it looks promising for the first time in two years now. I won't say this is my final competition, since I've said that twice only to return, so I'm not going to jinx myself again. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif