05-30, 14:50–15:15 (Europe/Amsterdam), Laboratorium
Discover the importance of research software in advancing science. Join us for a presentation on how research software engineering is evolving and the challenges organizations face in developing effective research tools. We introduce a solution: the Research Software Project Management- Focus Area Maturity Model. This framework helps organizations measure and improve the maturity of their research software projects there by evaluating its management process.
Research software is software that is instrumental in the production of research results. Research software plays an essential role in the scientific process, and research software engineering is rapidly maturing as a scientific discipline. The open science movement and research software's role is currently poorly defined. This is problematic, as regular software engineering practices do not suffice in guiding organizations that produce research software. They are challenged to: build communities around their software, provide correct licensing, create reliable and replicable software, develop teaching materials around them, and ensure that the research software is easy to adopt in research workflows. Without further guidance, these organizations have to improvise and invent new techniques for research software engineering, which is a slow and costly process. In this presentation, we provide a focus area maturity model that provides research software-producing organizations with a framework that enables them to improve their research software engineering processes structurally. The focus area maturity model for research software engineering enables organizations to structurally and incrementally improve their processes incrementally, supported with best practices and examples from the field. Using our model will save them time and resources in creating research software.
Phd candidate at Netherlands eScience center
Associate Professor at Utrecht University