Discovery · Systems Project 13

Goals and Roles

Everyone doing everything is the same as nobody doing anything.

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Project: Systems Project 13
Strand: Systems
Phase: Working as a Team
Time: One class period
What You Are Doing: Deciding what your team is actually trying to achieve, ranking it, then splitting the work into four jobs and taking a turn at each one.
Strand Link: Any time — but the earlier the better
Before You Start: Systems Project 11, if you have done it. Your team agreement is useful here.
What You Need: Your team
Your robot
Your notebook
A challenge you have already solved once

Before you start: type your PIN in the box at the top of the page. Your teacher gave you this number. When you finish, press Submit & Download to turn in your work and save a copy.

Try It — Take Away One Player

Pick a sport your group knows. List the positions people play, and what each one is there to do.

Position

What they do

If nobody did it…

Now imagine everyone on that team decided to play the most exciting position at once. What happens?

Which position is least glamorous but most missed when it is empty?

Now Look at Your Own Team

Think about the last time you worked on the robot together. Was one person typing while everyone else watched? Did two people try to do the same job? Did anything get missed because everybody assumed somebody else had it?

What actually happened last time your team worked together?

Learn It — Goals First, Then Jobs

A team without an agreed goal is several people working hard in different directions.

What makes a goal usable

A good goal is — you can point at it and say whether it happened.

Not usable	Usable
Get better at robotics	Every team member can write a complete program on their own
Do well this season	Score Mission 6 in under thirty seconds
Work together more	Everyone has been Driver at least twice

Not usable

Usable

Get better at robotics

Every team member can write a complete program on their own

Do well this season

Score Mission 6 in under thirty seconds

Work together more

Everyone has been Driver at least twice

And goals need ranking. When two goals pull against each other — and they will — the ranking is what settles it.

The four jobs

Programming as a group only works if the jobs are separated. Here is the split.

Driver: hands on keyboard

Types the code. Only this person touches the keyboard.

Does not decide what to type.

Navigator: eyes on the screen

Says what to write and checks it as it appears. Catches the missing semicolon before it is compiled.

Does not touch the keyboard.

Strategist: eyes on the field

Works out the approach, watches the robot run, and decides whether it actually worked.

Does not get pulled into typing.

Builder: hands on the robot

Keeps the robot in working order and makes changes to the hardware.

Only needed on teams of four.

Two People, One Keyboard

Driver and Navigator are the oldest trick in programming, and the rule that makes it work is that the person typing is not the person deciding.

It feels slow. It catches an enormous number of mistakes.

⚠ Roles Rotate

If the same person is always Driver, that person gets good at programming and everybody else gets good at watching.

Rotate every challenge until each of you has done every job.

Holding each other to it

Once people have jobs, they can be for them — meaning the team can fairly ask how it is going, because everybody knows who was responsible.

That only works if it is kind. “You said you would have the turn working — how is it going, do you need a hand?” is accountability. Blaming is not.

Do It — Decide, Divide, Rotate

1. Write your team goals

As a team, agree at least three goals. Each must be something you could point at and say yes or no.

Our goal

How we will know

Read them back. Is any of them vague enough that two people could disagree about whether it happened? Fix that one.

2. Rank them

Put them in order — 1 is the one you would protect if you could only keep one.

Rank	Goal	Why it sits here
1
2
3
4

Ranking Is Where Teams Find Out What They Disagree About

“Win the tournament” and “everybody can program on their own” are both good goals. They ask for different things during a team meeting.

Deciding now which one wins is far easier than deciding in the middle of an argument.

Did your team disagree about the ranking? What was the disagreement?

3. Five reasons and five struggles

As a class, work out why team structure matters — and what goes wrong even when you have it.

Reason to have structure

Struggle a team can have

4. Hand out the jobs

Assign roles for the first round. Write names down so nobody drifts.

Role

Who

One thing they must not do

Driver

Navigator

Strategist

Builder (if four)

5. Round one — a challenge you have already beaten

Pick something your team has solved before. The point is not the challenge; it is working in role while you do it.

Question	Our answer
Which challenge?
Did it work?
Who broke role first, and how?
Did the Navigator catch anything?

Question

Our answer

Which challenge?

Did it work?

Who broke role first, and how?

Did the Navigator catch anything?

⚠ Somebody Will Grab the Keyboard

It happens in almost every team on the first round. Say so out loud, laugh about it, and put the hands back.

6. Rotate and go again

Everybody moves one role along. New challenge. Repeat until everyone has done every job.

Round	Driver	Navigator	Strategist	Builder
1
2
3
4

Everyone on my team has done every role at least once

7. Which one suited you?

Question	My answer
The role I found easiest
The role I found hardest
The role I learnt the most in

Question

My answer

The role I found easiest

The role I found hardest

The role I learnt the most in

Were the easiest and the most-learnt-in the same role? What does that tell you?

8. Set a goal for each role

Now that everyone knows what each job feels like, give each role something to aim at for next session.

Role	Its goal for next time
Driver
Navigator
Strategist
Builder

Role

Its goal for next time

Driver

Navigator

Strategist

Builder

How will your team check whether these got done, without it turning into blame?

Score It — Checkpoint

Whose job is it?

Somebody needs to…	Which role
Notice a missing on line 14 as it is typed
Decide whether the run actually scored
Tighten the blade that came loose
Type what the team has agreed on
Work out a different approach after three failed runs

Somebody needs to…

Which role

Notice a missing on line 14 as it is typed

Decide whether the run actually scored

Tighten the blade that came loose

Type what the team has agreed on

Work out a different approach after three failed runs

Usable goal or not?

Goal

Usable?

Fix it if not

Be a better team

Score Mission 4 three times out of five

Try harder at programming

Can you do it again?

I can write a goal you could point at and say yes or no
I understand why goals have to be ranked
I can name the four roles and what each is for
I can be Navigator without grabbing the keyboard
I have worked in every role at least once
I can ask a teammate how their job is going without it sounding like blame

Think about it

Driver and Navigator is deliberately slower than one person just writing the code. Why is a team willing to pay that?

If one person is always Driver, the team gets faster in the short run. What does it lose over a season?

You ranked your goals before anything went wrong. How is that different from deciding in the middle of a bad afternoon?

You know what you are aiming at and who is doing what. What you do not have yet is when — or any way of finding out whether it is working.

In Systems Project 14 — Plans and Feedback, you build a timeline and then go and ask somebody what you got wrong.

When you are finished, press the button to turn in your work and save a copy.

KIPR · Botball Explorer · Discovery