Team size

Chit-Chat / Rumor Mill
#1

I was curious about how big normal vex teams are, I used to have a team of 10 but then most of them lost intrest so now I’m working with a smaller team and information seems to be more important and random questions are not as common is that actually a good thing？

#2

Hey there!

You can really make anything work. Teams have made the dome with 1-2 members, other teams have made the dome with 15. However, the skill set and work load will be very different depending on your team size.

For a team under 3:

  1. Expect to do a good portion of the work.
  2. Try to be able to do as much as possible- if you can build, program, drive, and scout, you’re a much larger asset than if you can only do one or two.
  3. Make sure everyone is putting in a lot of time.
  4. Avoid a team captain, as giving one person authority over one or two more can be an issue.

For a team of 4-8:

  1. You will probably need to assign roles of some sort to prevent fighting and maintain organization at competitions. It’s not a terrible idea to have a dedicated programmer, a dedicated driver, a dedicated scout or two, and a dedicated build team. If the team is big and experienced enough, multiple scouts, a back up coder, a pit manager, etc really will help you.
  2. Make sure everyone has a job! It’s easy to exclude less experienced members, but this can be a problem for those members. Make sure everyone has some role of some kind.
  3. Having a team captain can be a great way to resolve conflicts quickly at competitions and keep everyone organized, especially if they’re more experienced and put in a lot of time.

For a team of 9-20:

  1. Chances are not everyone will have a job that actually benefits the team. There’s just not enough work. Minimize this issue by giving the more active members more critical roles.
  2. Use your resources! With this many members, you can definitely have more specialized roles. For instance, you can have a fundraising manager that works on grants and donations and an “outreach” manager that tries to convince new people to join the program.
  3. At this level, there can be way too many hands in the cookie jar. A team captain is essential, and a mentor becomes much more useful at this level too.

For a team of 20+

For the love of the autonomous gods, please divide yourself into more teams :stuck_out_tongue:

Good luck!

#3

We aim for teams of 2 to 4, with 3 being ideal. It depends how much overlapping talent and interest each person has. Our senior team last year had three, one programmer, one who worked on notebook, and one who did the design, build, and driving.

Additional benefit of teams of three, all three can be at the field together every match.

#4

NO MORE THAN FIVE! Trust me, it sucks. If you have 20 on one team, you are screwed. Don’t even.

#5

I think it’s fine to have around 8-10 people, I mean, E-pilons did it pretty well and even won worlds

#6

Yeah, having a team of 8 is a perfect number imo. However, that’s also assuming that people will be absent for sports which may not apply to a lot of other teams. We have 6 members this year which should be a very good number because everyone on the team can do most of what is needed (although of course everyone has their talents).
On having captains: We don’t. Are team isnt too big but many other people would like have captains with a team of 6-10. However, we had a bad experience with attempting to set captains, so we instead work without them and let natural leadership designate a captain instead.

#7

I typically say no more than 6 on a team. 5 is perfect.

One of my teams had 8 students but the work wasn’t equally distributed, but everyone knew their role.

#8

Here are some threads that might answer your question.
https://vexforum.com/t/number-of-people-per-team/45629/1
https://vexforum.com/t/optimal-amount-of-team-members/40883/1
https://vexforum.com/t/team-member-amount/35901/1

#9

I am a firm believer that the smaller the better, 2 or 3. Best to get more kids touching the robot. However, that may change now because of new rule that you can only be on one team for the season. If you have a team of 3 and one has a band competition and one has a family emergency, you can’t even take someone from a sister team now to help them at the field for that event. And what happens if two kids quit? You are stuck with a single kid that can’t be moved to another team.

#10

My first year I was thrust into the role of unofficial captain, in total we hit 13 members, 9 continuous , and about 6 total were serious. Ideally in my mind IDEALLY you have 5 -7, a drive team, a programmer and your most socially gifted humans should be scouts/PR but they need to intimately be informed on your bot. Ideally you integrate your programmer into your build team, and appropriately value the concerns of the programmer especially in sensor placement and integration. While this is my opinion I’ve seen time and time again teams of 3 going to worlds and needing to adopt some team members to manage PR/ scouting at NON local comps where you don’t know everyone. Basically I second @anomaly until 9 people at 9 I feel you’re better off splitting and building two bots. although it would be freaking awesome to have a build team and a prototype team where its really one team but some people are always testing crazy build concepts that show potential, and the build team sees which ones they like and build a comp bot with those ideas.

#11

I like 4-5 roboteers, at 6, I’ll split them into two teams of 3 and go from there. These things are only 18" cubed, not sure how you would manage 12 people on a single team.

#12

1 person teams are op. If you have enough knowledge you can do it on your own and be fine.

#13

True 1 person is op

#14

1 person and a lackey to save time

#15

Siblings make great lackeys :slight_smile:

#16

IMO, teams of three are the right size. The goal is learning and small team sizes allows everyone the opportunity to learn all aspects (driving, programming, building, etc)

#17

@action000 I agree with a team of 3 is the perfect size.

#18

Personally, I believe that the right amount of members one should have on a team is 4-5. The extra 2 to 3 members on our teams allow that leeway if things were to happen (i.e. someone missed practice because they were sick, had other clubs that they needed to go to, family emergency, etc.). Anything over 5, I believe would become too chaotic, as some members would not have anything to do/learn anything. I think @Anomaly and @action000 summed it up the best, it’s really up to you, and you have to take a look at the situation.

(Our coach puts a limit on team sizes, to prevent teams either being too small (in case if people get left out) or too big: “teams of 3-5”)

#19