Roles, Groups, Teams and Lineups – Clarifying the Difference

Roles, Groups, Teams and Lineups can be confusing, especially if you’re new to GideonSoft. These are all different ways to organize people in meaningful ways. GideonSoft allows you to organize or structure individuals’ performance data for analytical purposes and for more efficient data collection.

Roles

• Roles are used to represent a subset of an organization and its structure, and usually align with permanent or ongoing purposes or categories of people with similar tasks.
• Each person in the system must be assigned a Role. A person can be a member of multiple Roles.
• Surveys & Observations can be configured to be completed for/about Roles.
• Roles can be used during data analysis (i.e. managers compared with employees).
• For example, it might make sense to create “Instructor” and “Student” Roles.

Groups

• Groups provide context in which teams are organized, and usually persist across Instances.
• Groups serve as a mechanism to form Teams within the Instance you’re engaging in.
• Groups do not actually contain individuals.
• Groups can be created at the Module level or the Instance level, though individuals are only assigned to Teams at the Instance level.
• Groups are typically named by the event for which the teams are being created. Examples might be “Obstacle Course”, “Group Presentation”, and “Team Building Exercise”.

Teams

• Teams are typically event-based, and exist only during a given Instance.
• Within each Group, up to X number of teams can be created.
• An individual can only be assigned to one Team, per group.
• Some documents can be configured to be completed for/about teams.
• Examples might be “Blue”, “Red”, “Green” and “White” teams (within an “Obstacle Course” group).

Lineups

• Lineups are temporary, and can act as a people filter, helping survey or observation input become more efficient.
• They can only be created via mobile app, by Power Users, enabling them to be created on the spot (or in the moment).
• A Lineup cannot be viewed by anyone other than the person who created it.

An individual can belong to…

• one or more Roles
• as many Teams as there are Groups (or none)
• many Lineups (or none)