Understaffed scouting

[Siri]

BrendanB's discussion of consistency in pick lists reminded me of this, so I'll just leave it here.

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

...Basically, if your scouts can't reliably count the number of totes a team can stack in a match, why would you trust that their "qualitative" assessments of teams mean anything at all?

I see where you're coming from, but there are also a lot of different reasons for "garbage in, garbage out" scouting. Quantitative data can be really, really bad in weak scouting systems--but is it because scouts are untrained? Unmotivated? Overtaxed each match? Exhausted?

Understaffed quantitative scouting has a tendency to be simultaneously boring and utterly exhausting, while not feeling particularly useful. It takes a lot of bandwidth to count game pieces and even more to track important quantitative movements. Qualitative scouting is like that, except it can be worse. Because (as you pointed out), if you're not well enough trained to count totes, it's unlikely that you're good enough with FRC to give meaningful qualitative input. That's the usual route. But--and I've been down this route as well--maybe you're understaffed but it's with trained, experienced scouts. It can be better to use those skills and keep them engaged with qualitative discussions than to bog down some of your best strategists in tote counting when you're not going to get good coverage anyway. It's all resource-dependent.

By the same token, if you're trying to make a team culture that wants to scout, selling it as "sit here and count totes" can be rather trickier than "sit here and talk to me about matches. What do you see? Was that a smart move? What will they do in match 34? What should we ask them in their pit?" I struggled for years to build up a quantitative scouting system in a very anti-scouting environment. Qualitative is sometimes an easier first step. Not always, and it's not necessarily more effective in the short-term--in fact it probably isn't, but very little is effective in weak scouting systems anyway. But it's a way to fix some of the "just make up numbers" plague in match scouting.

You're going to want both sides eventually. Scouting isn't just about how many totes someone scores. It's about predicting opponent's match strategies and individual play responses. Making a pick strategy isn't about ranking the highest scorers. It's about strategic decision trees and adaptability. In the end, blue banners aren't won by numbers on a page. They're won by allies that work well together, know their opponents and can manifest their work in their scores.