jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org
This resource first appeared in issue #59 on 29 Jan 2021 and has tags Technical Leadership: Software Development, Strategy: Marketing
Newcastle University Research Software Engineering 2020 (PDF) - Newcastle Research Software Group
BEAR - Advanced Research Computing Research Software Group 2020 Report (PDF) - Birmingham Research Software Group
These two reports on the 2020 activities of the research software development groups at Newcastle and Birmingham are extremely interesting if you run a research software development core facility-type operation, and very interesting even if you don’t int terms of the clear product and strategy mindset (and communications efforts) behind the groups.
In Newcastle’s, we get some interesting overviews of what 2020 held:
Their service offerings are discussed - offering MSc computing projects supervised by faculty and the RSE group, offering coding services with fractional FTEs written into grants They also are pretty transparent about where they’re going; they’ll changing to a simpler and easier to administer model but one with a little less certainty - rather than allocating (say) 40% of a staff person to a project, they’ll be charing facility day rates like a core facility. This will greatly simplify taking on shorter-term projects.
They’re also getting into higher-level services, like architecture/design training and consulting rather than doing the hands on work, and trying to tie into the institutional open data repository.
Birmingham’s is just as interesting, and reflects an organization with a different focus. The team has up to this point been a small number of centrally-provided RSEs plus dedicated RSEs for different colleges/schools, all sitting together; rather than longer-term contract software development they provided free, time-limited advice, coaching, coding, and mentoring. (The coaching is particularly interesting to me, as I hadn’t heard that before; they won’t be hands on keyboard but sitting with and advising as you take on projects - or even reviewing your code).
They’re also responsible for software maintenance on the main Birmingham research computing systems, and perform training.
They have started moving, however, to including grant-funded research software developers for longer-term projects, allowing researchers to “hire” a fractional software developer without having to recruit people with expertise they may not be able to judge, and have that intact whole person sitting in a team of colleagues.
Theres are really interesting documents, and our jobs as managers would be easier if more teams wrote up such descriptions of their operations routinely.
