Team / Personnel Management
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When founding a VexU team, it is important to setup processes and procedures that will be followed each year in order to develop stability within the club.
Bylaws are a written set of rules & processes that are followed by an organization in order to clarify any questions about how an organization works. This may or may not be required by the university that a team is a part of, but is nonetheless a good practice to set up expectations within a club.
Bylaws should include any status that a person can hold in a club (recruit, member, officer, etc.) as well as the expectations & responsibilities that come with that status. They should also outline processes such as onboarding, disciplinary action, and officer elections. It is important that bylaws are agreed upon and specific so that there are less disagreements.
An Officer Board is an elected group of students to hold key roles in a club/team. This board should include (at minimum) a President, Vice President, and a Treasurer while additional officers can be added as seen fit. It is up to an organization to find specific requirements, expectations, and election processes to follow.
This article is written primarily based on the experience of The Purdue SIGBots. As an organization with 14 years of experience competing in VexU, we have made many mistakes and want to share what we have learned, but this is not the End-All / Be-All solution.
There are 2 structures that need to be setup for a VexU team to be successful. Firstly is a communication platform. This is where members can discuss plans for a season, potential meeting times, and the status of tasks. Second is an organization platform where progress is documented, and overarching club organization can take place. These can be one shared platform, but it is often times better to find 2+ platforms that better suit each need.
This should be a highly organized place for documenting what is most important to the organization as a whole, and likely where a team's can be written & stored. The Purdue SIGBots has had success with using a combination of Google Drive & Notion.
Notion is a great way to organize information in series of databases, and nested pages. This allows for an organization to host living documents that need to be both edited & read (e.g. club bylaws & weekly meeting notes) alongside many other features that help with team organization, onboarding, and sharing resources.
Google Drive is a more general purpose file storage system. Google Drive has the capability to do what Notion does, but also allows for large file storage (e.g. shared CAD libraries, etc.) and a connection to the Google Work Suite with Google Docs, Sheets, & Slides for general purpose use.
This should be used for daily communication for members of the team. It is a best practice to keep this as open as possible as to not limit communication between members. Never create communication pathways that are needlessly restricted from certain members as this can quickly lead to a toxic working environment.
Discord is a common communication platform used in the Vex community. The benefits of Discord is its cross platform capabilities as well as how is can split one organization's server into many categories & channels for specific topics. Discord also allows for fast sharing of files and the ability to do audio/video calls within a server. Discord is also free.
Slack & Microsoft Teams both act similar to Discord but are used more widely in professional atmospheres. They both offer several plans for specific needs, but a university might also provide licenses for students.
The process that is used to track resources will vary based on the scale and preference of a club however it is vital to reduce waste, harm, and expenses.
Firstly, ensure that all equipment that is owned by the club has a place. The easiest way to keep a space clean, is to give everything a place that it should be stored and used. Small bins & tape for labels is a very inexpensive way to help organize a space.
After organizing, catalog all equipment. This doesn't have to be a count of every screw, but a list of all tools & equipment paired with a rough estimate of building materials goes a long way. This will ensure that when packing for competitions, equipment can be tracked and over a season, nothing is lost or stollen.
When ordering more parts & tools, it is a good practice to share an order sheet with the entire club so that expenses can be tracked easily & everyone can receive the parts that they need.
When dealing with large groups, it is important to keep track of all members in an organized way. It is a good practice to share a form with the team to document key information about them. From an organizational standpoint, having a name attached to a phone number, email, and similar information is helpful for emergencies. Having information on members' age, major, and experience is very helpful when dealing with the university as well has when talking to potential sponsors.