A FIRST team isn't just the people who work on the robot. It's common for rookie teams to concentrate everything on two or three people, only to realize too late that no one was covering other areas that are just as important to the final score.
How a team worksLink to this section
A well-structured team is organized into areas with clear responsibilities that work in parallel throughout the season — not one after another. While engineering builds the robot, marketing and outreach should already be documenting that process, because that documentation will become proof of work down the line.
- Understand how a team is organized.
- Learn the main roles and areas.
A team's areasLink to this section
- Engineering — designing, fabricating, and programming the robot.
- Business and Marketing — fundraising, identity, and outward communication.
- Impact and Outreach — community projects and spreading STEM.
None of these areas compete for the same space — they complement one another. A team that invests only in engineering usually goes far in robot performance but misses out on the Awards that evaluate the rest of the journey.
Robot development and projectsLink to this section
An idea only becomes a real project once someone takes ownership, sets a deadline, and defines how to measure the outcome. That applies just as much to a new robot mechanism as to a community impact initiative — and that's exactly where the team's areas intersect: engineering decides what to build, outreach decides how to communicate what was done, and business makes sure there's a budget for it to happen.
- How an idea turns into a project.
- How the different areas work together.
Documentation and presentationLink to this section
Recording the work throughout the season is what lets you tell that story later, whether in an Awards interview or an engineering notebook. Leaving everything to memory until the end of the season is the most common rookie-team mistake.