The United States Tennis Association (USTA) is recognized as the governing body for Tennis at all levels. They are known to bring people together from across the US to enjoy this sport. The USTA is the largest tennis organization globally, with 17 geographical sections, 700,000+ individual members and 7,000 organizational members, thousands of volunteers, and a professional staff dedicated to growing the game. USTA conducts as well as participates in competitions organized at both national and international levels. Apart from this, the organization also educates the public about the sport, provides world-class training, coaching, maintains rules of the game, and works with allied organizations to ensure integrity, quality, consistency, inclusiveness, excellence, and teamwork for the sport in the USA.
Mission: “TO PROMOTE AND DEVELOP THE GROWTH OF TENNIS”
USTA was using a web-based system to automate the umpire assignment tasks for various courts. Usually, the crew chiefs used to assign and schedule crewmembers to respective courts for every match, using this umpire assigning software . And the same system was used by the coaches to evaluate the performances of crew members. For most of the tournaments, they performed this task using their web-based sports team scheduling software, having certain limitations such as,
For USTA, deploying an efficient umpire management system became a necessity to facilitate the scheduling of the members for national and international tournaments. To overcome the above-mentioned problems, USTA was seeking a more reliable and easy to use smart device-based custom software solution to automate the umpire scheduling process.
To manage and accommodate crew members on the selected rotation schedules efficiently, USTA aimed to implement an android tablet-based umpire crew assignment solution, capable of offline synchronization support and other required features that help overcome the crew-scheduling problem for each small or large scale tournaments. Considering the USTA's requirements for simplifying the entire crew-scheduling process, Mobisoft built a customized "Umpire Crew Assignment Application."
Umpire Crew Assignment App is the umpire management system to efficiently manage the schedules of crew members to respective courts on the stipulated date and time of the tournament. This app simplifies the task of evaluating each umpire for the specific event and provides real-time data of the same. The app has made it easy for USTA to create crews, add new members with required skill sets, adjust scheduling as per tournament timing, view all the members in one place, and evaluate their performances. The offline support of the app facilitates error-free evaluation of the members.
The feature-rich USTA App has everything you need to manage your umpire and referee for respective tournaments. Let us have a look at its user interfaces for Crew Chief and Coach.
The Crew Chief module assists in the selection of several umpires in the solution. The Crew Chief user can monitor the team name, when the event is hosted, and specify the court. Based on the number of umpires chosen, appointing a chair umpire, and assigning the crew members, the crew chief module establishes a court layout on the device screen. The user can allocate umpire positioning concerning the tournament event. This module can configure the position of the umpire, crew members, switching long line umpires according to the tournament requirements. Through the Crew Chief Interface, the crew assignments can be saved and reviewed at any given point of time. This crew assignment module simplifies the process of umpire positioning and evaluation of crew members. Therefore, the ‘Umpire Crew Assignment App’ enhances the crew’s performance before the main tournament begins.
The Crew Assignment module for Coaches is another mobile interface assisting in the selection of court, session, and viewership of every specific evaluative details and status for crew assignment. This interface is primarily focused and built for coaches of the US Open tournament. It helps coaches configure their viewing of umpires in their respective positions. Simultaneously, it evaluates the status of the can view umpire information and their evaluation logs. The crew assignment module for coaches provides a detailed report. The report is based on the evaluation of the session, chair umpire, position, overrules, and rating. This interface also enables users to gauge the performance report based on specific criteria. Therefore, simplifying the process of sorting according to the overall evaluation score. This report is then made available to the user to download in a .xls format. Thus, the crew assignment app enables its user to review and assign crews according to the evaluation reports at any given time of the tournament.
The solution to this requirement was a customized application development. With the help of Agile methodology and a combination of two and more other technologies, we were able to customize the Umpire Crew Assignment App according to the necessary specifications. The key implementation in the custom software development solution includes the following:
Enters range for evaluation average, count of evaluations, selection of umpires, views evaluation summary of the umpire, sorts by umpire credentials, evaluation number, enables downloading the evaluation summary in .xls format
Featured in crew chief and coach interfaces syncs information locally in offline mode, information is uploaded to the server once network access is available, provides multiple resolution support
Sets respective umpires in their specific positions in different court layout, submits the configuration, etc.
Views all umpires on-court layout, evaluating every umpire by entering evaluatory notes)
Easy scheduling and management of crew members
Real-time updates to evaluate the performance
Multiple resolution support in both the interfaces
To develop this umpire scheduling software, Mobisoft was able to fulfill the required objective of USTA corresponding to the US Open Tournament. Several drawbacks were curbed while developing the umpire scheduling software. The following specialities helped USTA to manage every aspect of the umpire scheduling process:
USTA had an outstanding experience throughout the project with our interface, project management, production phase, and responsiveness. Before implementing our custom software development services , they faced issues with entering their data when network connectivity was unavailable. USTA was exceedingly impressed by our ability to tailor the specific UI required for the solution, which made their system more efficient. Our responsiveness, while dealing with changes and implementation, stood out the most for them. USTA recommends our solution based on the fact that we deliver a good product with UI implementation, and we are quick to address any issue that emerged during the software development process.
