| General Software infrastructure tool requirements: particularly configuration management (3), project management(3), documentation (3), computational mathematics (4), … |
The time scale for this phase is three months to a year. This is the major planning phase. While some small scale projects may not need much planning, many code development projects ultimately reach cost levels that exceed $100M over the life of the project. In every other type of technical work, sponsoring institutions require detailed plans for how the work will be accomplished, goals met, and progress monitored. They have found that plans and monitoring of progress are essential for minimizing project risks and maximizing project success. CSE is no exception. Developing plans for CSE projects is challenging. The plans must incorporate sufficiently detailed information on the project tasks, schedule and estimated costs for the project to be monitored and judged by the project sponsors and stakeholders. At the same time, the plans must preserve sufficient flexibility and agility that the project can successfully “discover, research, develop and invent” the domain science and solution algorithms need by the project. This is also the time to do a lot of prototyping and testing of candidate modules and algorithms and to explore the issues of integrating modules for different effects, particularly modules for effects that have time and distance scales that differ by many orders of magnitude.
| General Software infrastructure tool requirements and best practices include: ongoing [documentation of scientific model, equations, design, code, components(3)], configuration management (3), project management(3), component design(3), Compilers(1), Scripts (1), code driver(1), Linker/loaders(1), Syntax and static analyzers(1), Debuggers(1), V&V tools(2), .. |
This phase includes the development of the main code (highlighted in Figure 5), runtime controller, individual modules (highlighted in Figure 5), integration of the individual module’s physical databases, problem setup capability, and data analysis and assessment capability. It generally takes five to 10 years for the development of the initial capability of such a project. The steps are summarized below. As the project evolves, the software project management plan will need to be kept current. Risk management is a key issue. If an approach does not work, then alternatives need to be developed and deployed. All of the development should be under strong configuration management. The development of each module should follow a clearly documented plan that describes the domain science, equations, and computational approach. The final module should be thoroughly documented. This is essential for future maintenance and improvements.
