Scouting System Requirements

[Guy Davidson]

I'm planning to sit down and write an FRC scouting system from scratch. I'd like your help.

The first step in such a software project would be requirements. I doubt I'll found myself scouting, or even using the system myself at all, so I wanted to collect requirements.

General information:
The system, as I plan to write it right now, will be designed to run on one computer, independent of any external servers or other computers. If it's deemed important, the system will be able to merge data collected on a few computers running it.

Questions that I see:
- Should the system provide a live data collection interface, or should it assume that data is collected independently and added into the system after a match?
- What formats should the system be able to export data in?
- What data (both game specific, which we'll know more about next week, and not) do we want to collect?
- What types of statistical computations / rankings should the systme be able to handle?
- And most importantly, what requirements would you have from a new scouting system? What would make you use it?

Requirement Categories that I see:
- hardware/software requirements (for example, having a JRE installed for Java)
- user interface (information input, handling, viewing, analysis, output, etc.)
- data capabilities (how important is it that the system be able to accept new fields to track? Or is it enough to just track one pre-defined set of fields? Which fields should it track?)
- analysis capabilities (statistical computations or rankings, graphs / charts, etc.)
- customization (where it's important vs. where it isn't)

There's probably a lot I'm missing, and I'd like your help. Any input will be appreciated.

After I have more requirements, I'll probably design the system. I'll be happy to post the design for review, and then it'll be on to implementation.