During CSDC-6

• It’s very important to have established, written responsibilities laid out between two subteam leads
  • Setting timelines is another important thing for leads to agree on
• Having two leads per subteam, particularly in different streams, is incredibly valuable - especially for in-person work. It provides redundancy in case one lead ends up leaving, splits up the workload, and gives you someone to bounce ideas off of.
• When it starts to feel like a subteam is struggling with keeping motivated when doing work, or if deadlines are generally slacking, try using mid-week text based updates
• When choosing an advisor, make sure they’re ok to stay for multiple competitions and the long term. Figure out their goals.

Post CSDC-6

• Our leads need to reminded to give work to their subteams, especially during busy competition time. They tend to take on the work themselves and accidentally neglect their members.

  • Summer term is lowkey dead, so don’t worry if there’s not huge recruitment during those terms

• Create clear deadlines for the leads and talk to them if things on their subteam are taking longer than expected (ADCS magnetorquers)

• Help leads get onboarded better, I feel like there are a lot of times where the leads only get a partial onboarding before the old lead leaves and they are left scrambling

  • Process and documentation

• Keep good relations with our advisors

• Budget 3x the time needed for certain things and start integration several months (up to a year) before the end of competition

  • Aim to end 2-3 months before the actual competition date to allow for extra time for final adjustments and buffer time. Set this as a HARD deadline

• MELDA’S OPINION:

  • We have a chronic communication issue in this team. Subteam leads, despite having general meetings every week, do not communicate critical design changes to the other subteams which lead to severe integration issues
  • This made it very difficult for certain teams like the mechanical team to pivot and create new parts which lead to significant delays in getting parts machined
    • Mechanical integration is extremely important. If your part doesn’t fit, it doesn’t matter what it does
  • Teams with PCBs need to regularly communicate on things like their header pins, where they are in the stack in relation to one another, umbilical cords, data, and power.

• Organized PMs leads to organized leads and then to organized and happy members. As seen with the business team, if the leads don’t work well together, and are unhappy, that rubs off on the members and they’ll end up leaving

• Staying to hard deadlines

• Ensure tasks are finished before starting the next

• Ensuring funding is used before it expires

  • If a subteam needs funding, an blurb is needed - makes it easier on the business leads.
  • Need to make sure we always have an organized budget sheet
    • Filter by subteam, expiry date, etc
      • Subteam leads can go into the spreadsheet, see what money they have, and know where and how to order things

• Making to do lists for work sessions - themes?

Documentation

• Documentation rarely happens voluntarily. It needs to be enforced, and not through hounding people to get it done, but rather through formalized procedures and templates