Competition Programme Team
The Competition Programme Team is responsible for defining and delivering the Student Robotics Competition Programme. Estimated reading time: 16 minutes.
This page describes the structure, function and purpose of the Competition Programme Team ('the Team'). The Team is lead and organised by the Competition Programme Committee ('the Committee'). The purpose of the Team and its Committee is to define and deliver the Competition Programme for a single competition cycle (1 year). The Committee are ultimately responsible for ensuring that the Competition Programme is delivered to the standard expected by the Trustees. The Team (and its Committee) operates on an 11-month cycle (see Formation and Dissolution below).
For the SR2019 competition cycle (July 2018 to June 2019) the Competition Programme Team/Committee was known as the Core Team. It was renamed and split up for the following competition cycle to more clearly denote its purpose within the organisation and to encourage wider participation.
Structure
The Team is a group of volunteers who work together to deliver a single Competition Programme. Members of the Team work closely with other teams within SR and third parties in order to deliver the Competition Programme.
Volunteers ask the Committee to join the Team. The Committee should not unreasonably restrict membership of the Team, but should ensure that the volunteer is not already a member of another team within SR (see FAQ: Why can I only be in one team within SR?).
The Competition Programme Committee
The Team is lead by a Committee. The Committee is a group of 3-5 people who are ultimately responsible for ensuring that the Competition Programme is delivered to the standard expected by the Trustees. The Committee is accountable to the Trustees.
It is of vital importance to understand that the Committee serves a management and organisation role within the Team. They are strongly advised to not directly carry out the tasks required to deliver a competition; the Trustees will help to ensure that this is the case throughout the year. The Committee must focus on management of time, resources and volunteers within the Team. They should provide support and guidance to Team members to allow them to be as effective as possible in delivering the competition. The Trustees will provide support and guidance/training to the Committee to allow them to be as effective as possible in managing the Team.
Formation and Dissolution
The Team and its Committee operate on a 11-month cycle running from early July to early June the following year. The one month gap is enforced for two reasons:
It provides a much-needed break for members of the Team and Committee. Delivering a competition is a huge undertaking and can require a significant investment of time and effort from volunteers (although this should be kept under control by the Committee). The month's break removes all responsibilities and sense of duty to perform tasks from all members of the Team and Committee and is akin to the Formula 1 summer break.
It provides an opportunity for new volunteers to get involved in delivering a competition starting from the same place as the rest of the Team. There is nothing to stop volunteers joining the Team during the 11-month period, but it can be beneficial to be around from the start. Having a gap provides a definite start of a new cycle.
Around early July a new Committee is formed. Once formed, the Committee then assembles the Team that they will work with to deliver the competition over the following 11 months.
Registration of Interest
Approximately three weeks before the Committee is to be formed all registered Student Robotics volunteers are contacted to invite them to register an interest in being part of the next Committee or Team. Previous members of the Committee and/or Team are welcome to register interest. The Committee must have between 3 and 5 members. If more than 5 volunteers register an interest in being on the Committee they will all be invited to the formation meeting, however only 5 of them will be allowed to become Committee members. If more than 10 volunteers register an interest in being on the Committee then the Trustees will select a short-list of 10 volunteers to invite to the formation meeting based on the skills and experience they could bring to the Committee. Any volunteers who registered an interest in being on the Committee but were not selected will be contacted in the future if vacancies appear on the Committee during the 11-month period.
Formation
The Committee is formed at the start of the annual competition cycle, around early July. This happens during a physical meeting (reasonable travel expenses to/from the meeting will be reimbursed). At the meeting the Trustees will discuss their expectations of the Committee, what the Committee can expect from the Trustees and will endeavour to ensure that the responsibilities they would be taking on are clear. After discussing these points, and answering any questions, the Trustees will ask for a show of hands of people who would like to join the Committee. There is absolutely no pressure to join the Committee if one feels that they cannot commit themselves. If more than 5 people indicate a desire to join the Committee at this stage the Trustees will select the 5 people that they feel are most able to take on the responsibilities of the Committee based on the earlier discussion.
Once the Committee is formed the remainder of the meeting will be spent with the Trustees outlining their expectations for the Competition Programme. Each year the Trustees will provide guidance to the new Committee as to the direction in which they would like to the Competition Programme to be taken and where they would like the Committee to focus their efforts. For example it may be the case that the Trustees would like to expand the number of Teams, or they may want the Committee to focus on increasing volunteer engagement during this competition cycle.
The First Few Weeks
After the formation meeting has concluded the newly formed Committee must fulfil their collective responsibilities. The Trustees will also give the Committee members the ability to attend a professional third-party management training/coaching course to help them improve their management and delegation skills. Attending this course is highly recommended as it will give the key skills required to work as an effective Committee. The Trustees will also give the Committee the option of attending a professional third-party team building event/exercise if they so desire.
Dissolution
At the end of the annual competition cycle, around early June, the Committee is expected to meet with the Trustees to review the previous Competition Programme. This serves as a useful event for both the Committee to reflect on their achievements and the Trustees to gather as much information as possible to feed into the next competition cycle. After this meeting the Committee and the Team that it managed is effectively disbanded. There is approximately a one month gap until the Committee is next reconvened, allowing everyone to take a break. As mentioned above, previous Committee/Team members are very welcome to register their interest in being Committee/Team members the following year.
Review Questions
During the dissolution meeting the Committee will be asked, among other things, to answer the following questions. It may be helpful to consider these questions before the meeting:
Did the Committee and Team function well?
Was the Committee the right size?
Did everyone on the Team (including the Committee) have enough to do?
Did anyone have too much to do?
Were there tasks which no-one wanted to do?
What can we do to improve the diversity in the Team?
Were there activities the Team wanted to do but were unable to, and why?
Did the Trustees do enough to support the Committee?
How do members of the Committee see Student Robotics developing and expanding?
Unforeseen Circumstances
If a Committee member wishes to resign from the Committee part-way through the 11-month period they should email the Trustees (trustees@studentrobotics.org). The Trustees will work with the individual to see if there is any more help and support that they can provide to allow them to continue in their role. If there is no option for the individual to continue the Trustees will work to find a replacement volunteer to become a Committee member. Volunteers that indicated a desire to be on the Committee at the start of the period, but were not able to be members due to the size restriction will be considered first. The Trustees will also work with the remaining Committee to see if they have any recommendations.
Expectations and Responsibilities
Collective Responsibilities
After the conclusion of the formation meeting the newly formed Committee takes on the following two collective responsibilities. Both of these should be fulfilled within 2 weeks of the formation meeting.
Recruitment of a Team. The Trustees will provide the Committee with the details of volunteers who registered an interest in being on the Team during the Registration of Interest phase. The Committee should contact these volunteers to see if they are still interested and to make sure that they understand the purpose of the Competition Programme Team that they are looking to join. If they do still want to join the Team, the Committee must make it clear to them that they have joined and maintain a record of Team members. The Committee may also contact all volunteers throughout the 11-month period to recruit more members into the Team.
High level planning session. Hold a full-day session (in person) to prepare a high level plan for the coming competition cycle. To give a sense of scale, it is expected that this high level plan will take the form of no more than two A4 pages and should include time and resource estimates (both volunteers and assets). Also during this session the Committee must divide up the individual responsibilities between them (each responsibility must be taken by a single Committee member, each Committee member may take on multiple responsibilities). The Committee member responsible for reporting to the Trustees must report their division of responsibilities to the Trustees via email.
Throughout the 11-month period all Committee members are expected to do the following:
Agree to uphold Vision, Mission and Values.
Operate within the framework defined in this operations manual.
Abide by the Code of Conduct.
Commit to running a Competition Programme.
Maintain documentation of processes and anything else that they feel relevant relating to their responsibilities to help both current and future volunteers This documentation should be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Stick to the most recently approved Competition Programme budget. Note that all Committee members are responsible for sticking to the budget.
Individual Responsibilities/Roles
As well as the collective responsibilities defined above, the following responsibilities must be divided up among the Committee members. Each responsibility listed below must be taken by a single member and it is expected (in fact, necessary) for some members to take on more than one of the responsibilities. For example Member A may be responsible for X and Y and Member B may be responsible for Z; no other member may be responsible for X, Y or Z.
Reporting to Trustees. This committee member is responsible for ensuring that the Committee provides regular updates to the Trustees to keep them in-the-loop with the progress of delivering the Competition Programme. This is accomplished by arranging for online (Google Hangouts/Meet) calls every two to three weeks. They must also ensure that minutes are taken at Committee meetings and that these minutes are made publicly available.
Budget and expenditure management. This committee member is responsible for drawing up a budget for the Competition Programme and ensuring that expenditure within the Team is managed according to this budget. They must submit a budget to the Trustees within one month of the formation of the committee. This budget does not need to be extremely detailed; 8-10 budget lines is expected. The budget should be based on expenditure in previous years and expected changes to the Competition Programme this year. Submitting an incomplete budget (where noted) is better than submitting no budget. They must also do the following:
Keep financial records (in a form to be agreed with the trustees).
Submit final accounts (at the end of the competition cycle).
Understand and follow the requirements defined in the Money Matters section (this defines how budgeting works in more detail).
Event management. This committee member is responsible for overall management and delivery of the various events throughout the Competition Programme (Kickstart, Tech Days, Competition). This is a large responsibility and the committee member taking this on should not take on any of the other individual responsibilities.
Competitor team management. This committee member is responsible for the management of teams taking part in the competition programme. They are expected to ensure that a sufficient quantity of teams are signed-up to take part in the competition and that the teams receive an adequate level of communication to allow them to get the most out of being a team competing in the Competition Programme. In particular they should ensure that sufficient notice is given to teams prior to events to give them time to make the necessary preparations (schools usually require notice many months in advance of an event).
Volunteer management. This committee member is responsible for the management of two groups of volunteers: members of the Competition Programme Team and volunteers who are helping out at an event (who may or may not be a member of the Team).
In the case of Team members they should ensure that all Team members are given an opportunity to contribute towards delivering the Competition Programme and that they are guided to areas within the Team that require more effort. They should handle requests from volunteers looking to join the Team and also Team members looking to leave the team.
In the case of volunteers helping out at events they should ensure that all SR volunteers are given visibility of event volunteering opportunities and that they receive adequate documentation, training and support for the roles that they fill at the events.
Safeguarding and welfare. This committee member is responsible for ensuring that the Student Robotics safeguarding policy is abided by throughout the 11-month period and at events. They are also responsible for ensuring that all volunteers working on the Competition Programme (either in the Team or as event volunteers) are not overworked and that the level of responsibility being taken on by any individual is kept at an acceptable level.
Gathering metrics. This volunteer is responsible for ensuring that metrics are collected throughout the 11-month period. They should work with the Trustees early on to define a list of metrics to be gathered (e.g. number of teams, average number of competitors per team, average competitor to mentor face time per week, etc). It is of critical importance that SR gathers metrics to be able to optimise and improve the Competition Programme and to report to new and existing sponsors to prove the effectiveness of the Programme.
The Committee is free to define other roles within itself as it sees fit. It is also free (and strongly encouraged) to form sub-teams within the Team to handle certain aspects of the Competition Programme. For example the Committee member responsible for Team Management should form a 'Team Management Sub-Team' within the Competition Programme Team. This sub-team consists of volunteers who are primarily focused on the activities of managing teams.
Trustees' responsibilities to the Committee
In return for the Committee taking on the responsibilities specified above, the Trustees take on the following responsibilities:
Agree to uphold Vision, Mission and Values.
Operate within the framework defined in the Charity's constitution and in this operations manual.
Abide by and uphold the Code of Conduct.
Provide the option of professional third-party training/coaching in management and delegation skills.
Pay for Committee members' travel costs to and from the venue for their initial high level planning session.
Provide the option of a professional third-party team-building exercise soon after the formation of the Committee.
Manage all legal requirements relating to running the Charity.
Provide long-term direction and planning for the Charity.
Maintain a record of SR volunteers containing the details listed on the Volunteers page. Entries on this record will be reviewed every 18 months and entries deleted if the individual does not indicate a continuing desire to volunteer. For now only Trustees will have direct access to this dataset and the Committee will have to work with the Trustees to use it.
Maintain documentation of processes and useful information for both current and future Trustees. This documentation can be found in the wiki of the ops-manual git repository.
Manage fund-raising to ensure that their is sufficient funds for the current and future activities.
FAQs
Why can I only be in one team within SR?
Unfortunately SR has a history of relying too much on a small number of individuals. This can easily lead to those individuals feeling overworked and overwhelmed. Limiting membership to a single team within SR at a time is to protect you from the risk of becoming overworked and overwhelmed. One of the key responsibilities of the Committee is to ensure that Team members are happy and feel comfortable with the workload they have within the Team; if a volunteer is part of multiple teams it is very difficult for this oversight to be adequately provided.
You can still contribute to other areas of SR, within reason, while not a member of the team responsible for that area. However, you must consider that, as you are not part of the other team, you will not be fully aware of where the other team is currently focusing its effort and therefore your contribution may take a long time to be incorporated. Examples of how you might contribute elsewhere are things like: fixing a typo or suggesting improved wording in a document, fixing a bug in some code, minor refactoring of code, general house keeping/tidying of code and documents. You should not expect another team to accept large contributions that would have normally necessitated that team or its committee to more carefully consider its approach, for example don't expect your new motor board design to be accepted by the Kit Team if you are not a member of the Kit Team.
Why is there an upper limit on the size of the Committee?
The Committee is intentionally limited to a maximum of 5 members for two reasons:
To ensure that they do not get the impression that they could fulfil their responsibility to deliver a competition alone.
To operate efficiently and have good communication between members. All members of the Committee need to have an awareness of the current state of things and having a small group make this significantly easier and more efficient.
The limit of 5 members was chosen based on feedback from the Core Team that ran SR2019. Multiple Core Team members indicated that they thought a smaller Core Team (now the Committee) would operate more effectively.
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