Research, Develop, Deploy: Building a Full Spectrum Software Engineering and Research Department

Citation: Reed Milewicz, James Willenbring, Dena Vigil (2020/10/09) Research, Develop, Deploy: Building a Full Spectrum Software Engineering and Research Department. arXiv (RSS)
arXiv (preprint): arXiv:2010.04660
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Research, Develop, Deploy: Building a Full Spectrum Software Engineering and Research Department
Download: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.04660
Tagged: Computer Science (RSS)

Summary

• Description of the Software Engineering and Research Department at Sandia National Laboratories
  • Used to be Software Engineering, Maintenance, Support, but this was not an official department.
    • Lack of departmental status made it difficult to hire, retain, and advance RSEs.
  • Uses Matrix-management rather than hierarchical management (reporting to multiple rather than one member).
  • See also, University of Manchester's Research Software and Data Science (RSDS) group.
• Authors believe placing RSEs in inter-disciplinary (cross-functional) teams makes the team more productive.
• RSEs engage in three activities: Research, Develop, Deploy, with a focus on develop.
  • Research: Applied research in software engineering
  • Develop: Embeded development, maintenance, and support for scientific software
  • Deploy: maintain systems (e.g. Jenkins build/test farms)