Student presidents

[blakeelias]

I'm wondering how people structure the leadership of their teams.

Specifically, I am interested in teams who have a student serve as captain / president / CEO / chairman, who leads the entire project but does not have any particular responsibility with design, engineering, manufacturing, etc. What does this leader do on a day-to-day basis during build season? What does he do during competition? Does he have a technical background? How involved is he with the technical work? How involved is he with administrative work (team paperwork, meeting schedules, trip planning)?

My team designates a head of each department (engineering, software, and marketing), where the president of engineering is responsible for the entire project, but spends most of his time designing and building. We're concerned that, with our leader's time spent mostly on technical work, our management suffers.

There are many instances where one sub-team is not aware of another sub-team's most recent progress or delays, and the lack of communication leads to confusion and sometimes frustration. Or two sub-teams will slowly diverge without a sense of purpose, and while both are working productively, their results are not being actively integrated to move the project forward. Some of us feel that we'd work more efficiently with one manager who understands all parts of the project, and who can guide all divisions on what to do next, without getting bogged down in the details of technical work.

Anyone whose team is led by someone separate from the main technical people, could you please walk me through a typical build season, and explain how your leader manages the process? We'd find it very helpful to know how other teams organize this, as we're not entirely sure whether this is the right change to make, and if so, how to implement it and how to choose the right person.