The Volunteer Rota Rebuild
Untangled a volunteer rota that lived in one coordinator's head and rebuilt it so forty volunteers could see and swap their own shifts.
Problem
Forty volunteers, one spreadsheet only the coordinator understood, and a weekly scramble whenever anyone was ill or away.
What I built
A rota anyone can read: fixed shift patterns, a swap rule volunteers run themselves over WhatsApp, and a one-page guide so holidays don't break it.
My contribution
Interviewed the volunteers about why swaps failed, designed the new structure, and walked every regular through it one by one.
Process
Found the real failure
Swaps failed because nobody knew who was qualified for which shift, so that went on the sheet first.
Let volunteers run it
Moved swaps into the volunteers' own hands with one simple rule instead of routing everything through one person.
Outcome
Uncovered shifts dropped to nearly none, and the Sunday-night phone-around to fill gaps stopped happening at all.