Understaffed scouting

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by Siri

I think there's a lot of conflation of ideas going on here. What you do about scouting when you're resource-limited depends almost entirely on what you're trying to achieve. (Much like everything in life.) Are you legitimately aiming to be an alliance captain and make a pick list that can reasonably win you this competition? Then your best and only reliable solution is probably to not be understaffed (or under-trained, for that matter). Realize that this is a two step scouting issue: become an alliance captain and make your pick list.

But scouting that way when it's not your main/achievable goal that weekend won't necessarily help you. If your goal is to play well and get picked, 'gut' scouting isn't so bad. A few well-trained scouts/strategists can give you a lot of insight into your allies and opponents without actually tallying game pieces. In fact, when your team is understaffed but not under-trained in this way, qualitative can be better than quantitative. I've always opted for good qualitative over bad quantitative, and it hasn't let me down yet.

On the third hand, if you're aiming for either of these two and/or to get deeper into the FRC community, joint-team scouting can be great. Just understand it has its pitfalls.

On the fourth hand, if you goal is just to get better at the game (including scouting), you probably want a mix of qualitative and quantitative for your own team. I and most of the coaches I play with will keep at least one top scout on 'gut' duty--usually more than one--whenever we're fully staffed. That means at some point those guys need gut scout training. On the other hand, good quantitative scouting also requires practice.

Much like everything in this business, your scouting strategy needs match your competition strategy. Be honest with yourself - don't discount a strategy that (probably) won't make you Championship Alliance Captain when that's not your team's goal at the given moment.

I have to disagree with a few points here.
The problem with scouting under the assumption you won't be an alliance captain is that sometimes you still end up an alliance captain.
Every team should have a picklist going into Saturday morning, because a) they could end up an alliance captain, and b) they could get picked by a team with no pick list.

In my opinion and experience, quantitative scouting is almost always better than qualitative. That being said, if you're unable to put together the people in your team or through multiple teams to have a quantitative scouting group, qualitative is better than nothing (and is often a good supplement to hard data anyway.)