[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

This seems to be a good point in the discussion where I can add something JVN posted a while back in a similar thread. It was something to the effect of "We will never vote on a design. Voting is not an engineering decision making process."

I agree completely with that, and not everyone should have an equal say, or even a say at all.

If you look at how some of the most successful teams operate, you'll notice that they often have one person driving the design, from big picture to minute detail. They can delegate the work, but they are beginning with the end in mind, and know what the whole thing should look like before any of it is CAD modeled or built. These individuals are often mentors with many years experience in FIRST, and they have often closely studied the successes of others.

This is probably one of the best summaries I've ever seen about why the teams that are awesome are awesome. While hard work and resources are important, having a single extremely competent person with control over the design is probably the most important factor to team success.