Team Interview: How do you manage your team?
3 min readBetween December 2019 and January 2020, the Curiosum Tech team interviewed a few FS teams in Mumbai, Pune and some at the Formula Bharat 2020 event. The purpose of these interviews were to gain student insight information from their various activities within a Formula Student team and provide it as a resource sharing opportunity with other teams within the country and outside its borders as well.
The first common question we asked teams were:
How do you manage your team, especially the stress and chaos that may encompass it?
The teams’ interviews compiled here are as follows:
- STES Stallion Motorsport (Smt. Kashibai Navale College of Engineering – Pune)
- DJS Racing (Dwarkadas J. Sanghvi College of Engineering – Mumbai)
- Orion Racing India Electric (K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering – Mumbai)
- Team Octane Racing Electric (College of Engineering, Pune)
- Team Kratos Racing Electric (Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering – Pune
- STES Racing (Sinhgad College of Engineering – Pune)
STES Stallion Motorsport
Team Strength – 40 members
Overall 4th place at FB2020 Combustion
Hrishikesh Pawar – Team Captain
Hrishikesh: We have a set hierarchy – Team Captain – Team Manager – Technical Coordinator – Manufacturing in charge. It is easier to coordinate with these 3 leads, rather than to coordinate with every member of the team, every day. This allows us to manage the team in a better manner. But at the same time it is essential to have a good amount of interaction with each team member as well.
DJS Racing
Team Strength – 110 members
Overall 7th place at FB2020 Combustion
Harshit Mehta – Team Manager
Harshit: We have figured that with proper communication and coordination, you can manage any number of people. Coordination is key between various departments and teams, because everyone has work on the car. We follow a set process of how the car is going to be built. So we set a timeline / schedule of which department works when and that is how we manage to quiet down the chaos.
Orion Racing India Electric
Team Strength – 60 members
Overall 1st place at FB2020 Electric
Shanay Shah – Team Captain
Shanay: We have a set hierarchy, every team member reports into someone above them and that lead person reports to me. That is how our team is structured and it helps in better team management.
Team Kratos Racing Electric
Team Strength – 42 members
Overall 3rd place at FB2020 Electric
Shubham Patil – Team Captain
Shubham: All the members are divided into various sub-systems. We have 6 sub systems and each sub system has 6 members and has a System Head and as a Team Captain, I coordinate with the Sub-system heads and they communicate the information to their members.
Team Octane Racing Electric
Team Strength – 25 members
Overall 2nd place at FB2020 Electric
Jayesh Dhande – CTO
Jayesh: There is a lot of work to be done and not many team members, hence it can get difficult at times. But the members of our team not only work subsystem-wise, they are ready to work on any other task if needed, irrespective of the tasks they are assigned, and also commit to extra hours in the workshop to fill up the gap of having less number of team members
STES Racing
Team Strength – 40 members
Overall 23rd place at FB2020 Combustion
Pranav Pandit – Team Captain
Pranav: All the 40 members of the team are mature to do their own tasks and use their own minds to tackle any issues, and not just rely on a single person to solve it.
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The interviews were conducted by Cleon Rodrigues, with assist support from Ruben D’Souza and Abhishek Patil. The editing and consolidation of script was conducted by Ruben D’Souza and Sharlet Mariados.