Team:Edinburgh/HP/hierarchy
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<q>For a team as large as ours, a leader is absolutely necessary.</q></li> | <q>For a team as large as ours, a leader is absolutely necessary.</q></li> | ||
<li>For those who said they had or wanted to have a team leader, we asked to clarify what they thought the role would involve and what the benefits would be.<br> | <li>For those who said they had or wanted to have a team leader, we asked to clarify what they thought the role would involve and what the benefits would be.<br> | ||
- | <q>I think the team needs a coordinator who would keep the bigger picture in mind and integrate all parts, and keep on track which parts need more attention.</q> | + | <q>I think the team needs a coordinator who would keep the bigger picture in mind and integrate all parts, and keep on track which parts need more attention.</q><br> |
<q>A team leader could help us decide if and when we needed to drop some part of the project, and motivate us to finish things well on time.</q></li> | <q>A team leader could help us decide if and when we needed to drop some part of the project, and motivate us to finish things well on time.</q></li> | ||
<li>However, it was also indicated that it would be difficult to decide who the leader should be:<br> | <li>However, it was also indicated that it would be difficult to decide who the leader should be:<br> |
Revision as of 15:38, 17 October 2014
HierarchyIn several systems, a hierarchical structure can be observed, i.e. rather than everyone being equal, such positions as ‘team leader’ or similar may arise. Going back to Edwin Hutchin’s example of navigating a ship into a port, it is obvious that the social structure of the crew plays an essential role. The navigator needs to be higher ranked than the sailors. That way he can give them the necessary orders for the efficient gathering of the essential information about the ship’s location. On the other hand, many other systems perform better if all individuals have equal levels of authority. Thinking back to our bacterial system, do we need a ‘master strain’, with higher control/power? We asked the teams whether they felt that they had a team leader, and whether they felt they needed one.
Relevance for bacterial system designThis picks up on the idea by Wittebolle and colleagues (2009) that there is a need for an even distribution of functionally redundant members. They found that if the community depends too much on a dominant strain the population is more susceptible to fluctuations. Taken together with our findings from the iGEM interviews we are inclined to believe that it might be better to have no hierarchy in our system and ensure equal contribution of all components. This is in accordance with the horizontal structure of hierarchy we wanted to achieve with population control. |