Who does what on an FTC team

Roles are jobs, not titles

A title tells you where someone sits in a hierarchy. A role tells you what does not happen if that person is away. Only the second is useful.

Define each role as an owned outcome ("the portfolio is submitted", "the robot is packed", "the budget is current") and the team can immediately tell what is uncovered. A list of Vice Presidents cannot do that.

The jobs that must exist

• Build. Mechanisms designed, made and maintained. Usually split by subsystem with an owner each.
• Software. Teleop, autonomous, sensors and tuning. Needs the robot early, which is a scheduling problem, not a software one.
• Drive team. Driver, operator and coach, chosen on measured practice rather than seniority.
• Documentation. The engineering portfolio and the entries it is built from, written during the season.
• Outreach. Events run, relationships kept, outcomes recorded.
• Finance. The budget, the orders, the receipts and the sponsors.
• Logistics. Registration, event forms, packing, tools, spares and the parts inventory.
• Scouting. Match data at competition and the alliance pick list.

A team of eight

With eight people, roles double up and that is fine. What matters is that every job on the list above has exactly one name against it, even if some names appear twice.

A workable split: two on the drivetrain and chassis, two on the scoring mechanism, one on software, one on documentation and outreach, one on logistics and finance, and the drive team drawn from whoever practises best. The mentor covers safety and anything with a legal signature on it.

The trap on a small team is the person who owns four jobs because they are capable. When they are ill in week seven, four things stop.

A team of thirty

Above about fifteen people, the problem inverts: there is no longer enough work at the robot for everyone, and the students who cannot get near it drift away.

Split into sub-teams with a student lead each (build, software, documentation, outreach, business), where the lead's job is to have work assigned to every one of their people and to report status once a week. The failure mode of a big team is twelve people watching four people build. A visible task board with owners and dates fixes most of it; tasks and schedule is what the toolkit does for this.

The drive team is a role, not a reward

Driver, operator and coach are three distinct jobs. The driver moves the robot, the operator runs the mechanisms, the coach watches the field and the clock and tells them what to do next, and the coach role is the one teams under-value most.

Pick them on timed practice results, announce it early enough that they get real practice, and name a substitute for each. A drive team chosen the week before an event has no muscle memory, and it shows in the cycle time.

Competition day has its own assignments

The roles that matter at an event are not the same as the build-season ones, and deciding them in the car park is how teams miss matches.

• Queuing: one person watching the schedule, getting the robot to the field on time. This is the job that saves you a match.
• Pit repair: who has the tools and the authority to change something between matches.
• Judging: who talks to judges, who has the portfolio, who knows the answers.
• Scouting: who is recording matches for the pick list.
• Batteries: one person charging, labelling and rotating them.

One owner per thing

Shared ownership is the most common cause of a task nobody did. Two people on a mechanism is good; two people responsible for it is a mechanism that arrives late.

Write the owner down where everyone can see it, review it weekly at your team meeting, and reassign openly when someone is overloaded. That last part is what keeps a capable senior from quietly becoming the entire team.