Our team has a Team Captain at the top of our hierarchy. Under him, We have the roles of Past Captain (if we have a former captain still on the team), Business Manager, Robot Manager, and Safety Captain (to give him some superiority). Under the Robot Manager, we have: Strategy Lead (Strategy), Field Coach (Drive Team), Build Manager, Lead Programmer, and Documentation. Under Business Manager we have: Administration (usually filled by a teacher/mentor), Team Image Coordinator, Award Submissions, Promotion, and Documentation. Almost all of these subcategories have a lead. These leads along with the Business Manager, Robot Manager, Past Captain and Team Captain are the Management Team. The management team meets with mentors and other team members and then makes team decisions based on vote. Each Lead/Manager/Coordinator is in charge of their department, but are not limited to doing just that (example: I occasionally work on the robot, even though I am Business Manager). We choose our captain in May (by a vote) when (for us) the next years season starts (in May 2012, we will start the 2013 season). The captain, along with guidance from mentors and possibly a past captain, choose the Management Team in the fall.
As for how this year's build season went, here it is: We hold kickoff at a member's house where, once the game is released, we immediately start brainstorming. We spend the next few days designing the robot and (by vote) we agree on various design elements (drivetrain, frame type, launcher mechanism...). Our CAD team then begins laying out the bot in Solidworks, while our build team begins to prototype the launcher. While this is all going on, on the Business side, the Chairman's Team begins to work on essays and the presentation. About half way through build season, the CADers are ready to send off the first of the components to be laser cut. The base frame is the first to come in, which we bend and rivet. This gives our members to begin work on the electronics board (with the cRio, power distribution board, digital sidecar...). All of the CADed components are now in and have been assembled. At this point we are about two weeks until bag and tag. The chairman's team is close to finishing their essays and their presentation is being finalized. The CAD team, with input from the builders and team management, make any modifications to the CAD and (if necessary) send new components to be laser cut. A few days later, we have a second (unfinished) robot. At this point, our competition robot (the second one) is getting a few finishing touches with the second electronics board, pneumatics, and drive train installed. Our team takes advantage of the 30lbs of replacement parts that we can bring to competition. So we kept our final shooter to be finalized and put on a (working) dummy shooter. We then bag the robot on stop build night with the final drive base, electronics and pneumatics installed, and a tower and shooter that will be replaced at competition. We then use the next four weeks (for us, we don't compete until week four) to perfect our shooter and tower using the first drive base we constructed. While all this is going one, the Robot Manager is overseeing it all. The Business Manager (me) delegates tasks while focusing on creating our business plan, our Chronicle (200 page binder which documents our season and provides an overview of our history) and our team information packages (which we give to both teams and judges in the pits). Programming takes place throughout the season with a lead but no specific team. Team Image and Promotion are more active just before and at competition. And that's about it.
If you'd like to review our team hierarchy structure, it is available
here.