How To Build a Robot (Part 1)
The title of this blog post may be a bit misleading. Let me clarify that this is not an actual physical robot made of metal. This is a robot within a computer that can be scheduled or forced to run manually to input data, extract data, open websites or applications and sign into them when needed. Essentially, they are used to automate repetitive tasks.
Initially, most people’s reaction is to assume this is work related only. This includes automating tasks such as data entry into systems or extracting data from sites that do not have API/reporting capabilities. However, there are opportunities to automate tasks for in your personal life. Do you always post on social media at a certain time every day? Do you need to check up on the stats for your favorite sport? Or to take it further, do you check on recent player stats, game times, and more to pick the best line-up for your fantasy team that week? What if you could automate all of that to build the optimal team each week? Looks like you found your RPA project which happens to be the literal first and second step of creating any robot: defining the repetitive task you need to automate and identifying the full scope of what you could do with it.
Now that you have your project, what’s the actual first step on building the robot? You will start by mapping out the full process from start to finish. Where do you pull the information from, how you calculate the best option, and where do you input that calculated decision? Technically, this is called gathering requirements from a Business Analyst in IT’s perspective. Let’s break it out into each section.
Think about what information you base your player decisions on. This will be your data used to input into your calculations. You’ll need to find which site, or sites, you pull the player and game stats from. This should be what you view as the most reliable sources for your required player data. Now, define which data you need based off the scoring system of your individual fantasy league. If it is baseball, you’ll need to find out starting pitchers as you would not want to have someone playing on your team that week if they aren’t even going to throw a single pitch. You’ll of course also collect all data that gives you points such as how many hits, runs, stolen bases, or other data that has point value at the player level within your league. Now you have successfully defined the data you need and where to get it from.
Next, dust off and stick on your old algebra hat. You’ll need to figure out how each stat should be used to give each player a ranking number. This will be based off all the data you pulled from the initial site. For example, if you know a player is injured for the week, you should assign that player a zero, this way the robot does not even consider them an option for your team. If someone has been on fire recently with hits, runs, homeruns, or more than you would give them a higher-ranking number, therefore your robot considers them the strongest choice for your team. This is a crucial part of the process as you are essentially building the brain of your robot. The more parameters you use and the more specific your calculations, the smarter your robot is and the better yield you will get from using it. That field player that initially has the highest ranking may be hitting against the league’s best pitcher this week. Taking that into consideration should lower their ranking, right? Again, the more specific and more things to consider in your decision the more accurate your ranking/point scale will be and the better chances of you winning!
Now that your robot has pulled the input data and completed the calculations to give each player on your team a specific ranking number you can just have it spit out the list and plug that into your fantasy team website, right? Wrong! Why do that yourself when you can have a robot do that for you? You’ll need to supply the robot with the website and login, and have it put your ultimate fantasy team up against your competitors.
Now that you know the data you’re pulling to input into your calculations and where the yield of those calculations needs to be applied, you have completed the first step of building your RPA project, gathering your requirements. This all may sound like cheating the fantasy league system; however, these robots are only as smart as the information you give them and of course, like all gambling, it is completely up to chance what will happen in that next game. You’re just letting the robot do all the boring work for you.
In part two of “How to Build a Robot”, we will get into the gritty details of what is involved when using RPA Software. You’ll learn how you take these requirements you gathered and the tedious details on building a robot that will be scheduled to update your fantasy team each week, day, our even hour. Look forward to seeing you next time.
If you can’t wait until next time, check out this link which reviews all the best RPA software out there.
Site Title 