How can Software Management Plans boost your research?

Software management plans (SMPs) are inspired by Data Management Plans. In these documents, often created at or before the start of a project, plans and explicit decisions are made about various aspects around the management of these digital objects.

In an SMP it is explicitly stated what the software aims to do, who its target audience is, and what resources it is expected to need. It also addresses the intended lifespan, and allocates responsibility: who makes releases? Who maintains the software at the end of the project, and if so for how long?

In this session we will explain the concept and benefits of having a software management plan (SMP), whether you work with a few lines of code or a large codebase. SMPs are meant to help you think about how to manage your code to get the most out of it. Depending on how mature your code is, this mean just a couple things, or a long list of requirements which you don't want to forget. We will practice in small groups to create an SMP for an existing software tool or for a piece of code you can bring yourself.