[IKE]

For a couple of years, we have been working on various scouting systems for FRC. While objective data is great for sorting teams, choosing the 24th best machine at an event with 40 teams can be quite difficult. For this years game, only the upper 1/2 of teams could consistently hang a single tube. That means when sorting teams 20-28, frequently a lot of subjectivity is used for choosing that 3rd team.

The keys to good subjective data are:
Pay Attention- It is often hard to watch 3XXX when 217 is on the field, but remember you already know 217 is awesome. the tougher decision is whether 2XXX is better than 3XXX (picking on young teams a bit here).
Common Input: (this book is intended to be filled out by a single person). One person's 4 may be another person's 3, but a single person's 4 should be better than that same person's 3 (at least from their point of view).
Review EVERY Team-Look for weaknesses in the really good teams, and strengths in the weak teams.
Watch a Lot of Matches-Really critically watching matches will help make you a better scout, strategist, and ultimately even a better designer. Seeing a team struggle with a tube slipping around for 50seconds and then watching a similar design with a slightly different grip always have proper orientation should be a red flag to go look at both of those machines and see what the difference is. Often times the fishing pole rod, or extra 2 inch polycarb flap, or surgical tubing wrapped around the inside of the claw is a key adaptation that took a margin system to an impressive system.
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I have never used this version yet in competition, but have kept similar journals for other types of judging. Please feel free to provide feedback or comments. Ideally try and use this booklet at an offseason and provide ideas on what could make it better.
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Scouting is also a form of competitive benchmarking. There are entire companies that are built on the sole purpose of competitive benchmarking (JD Powers, Consumer Reports,....). If you really enjoy scouting, you may want to look into a career in benchmarking.