Convincing a team to go electronic

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by T.Krauter

Hey everyone,
My team has been trying to improve our scouting system for the last few years, and for me, the next logical step is to move to an entirely electronic scouting system. However, other members of my team don't see the advantages of a fully electronic system, and just see the costs of setting up electronic scouting. How did you convince your team to change to electronic scouting, and about how much did it cost.

Thanks,
Tanner
4946

Electronic systems provide certain advantages, but also some disadvantages. Figuring out what kind of scouting system is best for your specific team's resources can be a challenge, and there's no one-size-fits-all system.

Electronic systems can provide a ton of additional data analysis tools, and possibly reduce the manpower needed to run a system.

Electronic systems can also require a ton of additional work beforehand, can be subject to possible malfunction, and can require additional resources while at competition.

I'd suggest undergoing a discussion with your team where you objectively evaluate your options, and then put in the work before competition season to test it and make sure it works for you.

[Ari423]

Last year 423 experimented with a paper/electronic hybrid scouting system. Match data was recorded by hand on faux scantrons and then a central computer scanned and interpreted the scantrons and tabulated the data. It worked fairly well in testing (it was only developed for our last local competition), but it needs some more work before it actually becomes feasible to replace paper-only scouting. The end result, however, will be an electronic scouting system that doesn't cost the team anything (other than paper - we already had a spare laptop and webcam) and doesn't rely on the members' using their own phones (because a number of our members don't have smartphones).

[jweston]

Your strategists and scouters are really the ones to make or break this argument. Their jobs are directly affected by it, for better or worse.

A lot depends on what kind of data they find important. Stats (points scored, misses, fouls, etc.) for each robot works well. Qualitative assessments (stability, execution speed, durability, etc.) or showing illustrations (routes, critical point on the robot, etc.) can be harder to incorporate into a good UI. This is especially true if your UI did not anticipate a game metric your strategists would want.

Does your team currently have the tools to use electronic records in a way that would make a difference to your strategists during an event? If not, you may be putting the cart before the horse.

Regardless of how your team chooses to implement, I recommend ensuring your scouting system serves the people who use it and not the other way around.