software sustainability: a uk perspective

Software Sustainability Institute

www.software.ac.uk

Software Sustainabilitya UK perspective

17November 2011

SC11

Neil Chue Hong

[email protected]


www.software.ac.uk

The UK experience so far

• e-Science OMII (2004-2006) – harvest and maintain, create

middleware, strong process OMII-UK (2006 – 2010) – cultivate and

sustain, integrate, emphasis on existing software ENGAGE (2008 – 2010) – pilot and champion, show benefit

• Computational Science Collaborative Computational Projects (CCPs) – flagship

codes STFC Software Engineering Support Team (1978 – present)

• Software Sustainability Institute (2010 – 2015) and Sound Software (Audio Tools)


www.software.ac.uk

The Software Sustainability Institute

A national facility for building better software

• Better software enables better research

• Software reaches boundaries in its maturity cycle that prevent improvement, growth and adoption

• Providing the expertise and services needed to negotiate to the next stage• Software reviews and refactoring, collaborations

to develop your project, guidance and best practice on software development, project management, community building, publicity and more…


www.software.ac.uk

Software maturity comes in stages

• Governance model must support changes, not stifle; from start-up to successful and sustained

Idea Prototype Research

Idea Prototype

Idea

Idea Prototype Research Supported Product

Idea Prototype Research Supported

An idea to solve a problemSingle developer/user

Scaling to work for othersFirst “outside” users

Understand the functionalityA few close developers/users

Allow othersto participate


www.software.ac.uk

Challenges to sustainability

• Software is not valued in the same way as research What is software worth? How much “invisible” effort is invested? How much credit do you get towards tenure? There is no consistent way of rewarding reuse

• Researchers who develop software, work with developers, need a specific set of skills Training, e.g. Software Carpentry, builds a common language Training early in career should be on exploiting, not conforming as we

can’t predict how people will use the software

• Current software funding cycles/roadmaps do not aid planning and cooperation Projects and groups must have a roadmap to build against and we must

retain competition and excellence without losing skills The best research is trans-national: our infrastructure must support this We can’t build up trust for the long term


www.software.ac.uk

Looking to the future

• How do you evaluate software sustainability? Technical and Governance Self-certification versus Third-party examination Templates and best practice; similar to Data Management Planning

• How do you encourage reuse of good software? Specific funding for developing, maintaining and “championing” software Citation and credit mechanisms that reward developer and user when software

is reused; requires better identification of software in use Supported open platforms are the key in the age of the research mashup Create a larger proportion of“software-enabled”researchers and provide the

ramps to go from desktop to high-end infrastructure

• How do we overcome the “not developed here” syndrome? Where does the problem lie? Can we do this internationally? Recognise the distinction between encouraging the “emergent” communities

and translating successes into the “mainstream” of research

software sustainability: a uk perspective

Technology