Understaffed scouting

[artK]

Inter-team scouting is a good way of doing it, if both teams arrange it beforehand. (My one caution would be to have people from the other team scout your robot to reduce bias).

If you have <=6 people: Have two of them scout each alliance as a whole (swap them in and out as need), and someone compile the data between matches. Then have the remainder scout individual robots determined at the start of the match for specific qualities.

In the early matches, pick teams that are likely to be captains or first picks so you can sort out the top. As matches progress, start going with teams who could make second picks, but still check the top teams.

Create a sketch of a list at lunch, see if you can compare teams close to each other in close matches (if team A, B, and C are all next to each other in the list and all play in four matches, have one guy watch them during their respective matches, then do a sub sort).

A number of teams already do the above, in addition to the 6+data compiler scouting teams. The only thing if you do this is that the 2-5 people should be the same 2-5 people all day, not 2-5 who switch off with pit crew*. Like designing robots, it's better to have a few experienced scouts than a lot of okay scouts. If you have the same few scouts running the team the whole season, you will all get better at it by the time champs rolls around.

*If pit crew has input about how certain teams work with your team or suspect failure points in other machines, take it into consideration.