Software Management Plan

[EddyCMWF]

Description

Software management plan. Content very much open for discussion. This would be very useful for managing the External Contributions, but when I started writing I realised it would also be very useful for internal projects and contributions.

Contributor Declaration

By opening this pull request, I affirm the following:

• All authors agree to the Contributor License Agreement.
• The code follows the project's coding standards.
• I have performed self-review and added comments where needed.
• I have added or updated tests to verify that my changes are effective and functional.
• I have run all existing tests and confirmed they pass.

[EddyCMWF]

A useful link:
https://www.software.ac.uk/guide/writing-and-using-software-management-plan

[jameshawkes]

Hi @EddyCMWF, thanks for this initiative!

• Is the idea that we would ask this as a WP0 deliverable from an external contract, or is this supposed to be part of their proposal and initial contract?

• For an external contract its clear to me that "project" in the first sentence of this document refers to the scope of the contract, so potentially many repositories. That's fine, and a good granularity. If we apply this internally its not necessarily clear what is a "project" vs a "just a tool" or "just a library". Applying this to every repository would be a bit much, but then not quite sure when we apply this.

• We could consider linking this in some way to the Project Maturity. We could say that Sandbox repositories come with no guarantee of software lifecycle, but as a condition of moving to "emerging" they must have or be part of a software management plan. This lines up with the project maturity definitions since the main threshold for "emerging" is currently "there is a clear project goal", which is one of the components here.

[EddyCMWF]

Hi @EddyCMWF, thanks for this initiative!

* Is the idea that we would ask this as a WP0 deliverable from an external contract, or is this supposed to be part of their proposal and initial contract?

* For an external contract its clear to me that "project" in the first sentence of this document refers to the scope of the contract, so potentially many repositories. That's fine, and a good granularity. If we apply this internally its not necessarily clear what is a "project" vs a "just a tool" or "just a library". Applying this to every repository would be a bit much, but then not quite sure when we apply this.

* We could consider linking this in some way to the [Project Maturity](https://github.com/ecmwf/codex/tree/main/Project%20Maturity). We could say that Sandbox repositories come with no guarantee of software lifecycle, but as a condition of moving to "emerging" they must have or be part of a software management plan. This lines up with the project maturity definitions since the main threshold for "emerging" is currently "there is a clear project goal", which is one of the components here.

Hi James,

1. Good question, it could be either or both, at least it should be fine tuned as part of a WP0
2. Yes internally things are more fluid, and maybe we only use it for external contributions at first. I do think it could help address issues such as orphaned repos and duplicated software functionality we see a lot a the moment. It would also help clarify to us developer what's expected when we create a new software repo, and encourage us to see what else is out there.
3. Agreed! I think the "Development, Maintenance and Ownership Roadmap" section is crying out for a reference to it.

[EddyCMWF]

Hi @corentincarton , @cauzm and @iainrussell ,
Thanks for your first round of reviews. Having taken all the feedback on board (including some from other channels) the SMP has evolved significantly so would appreciate a second look if you don't mind.
To make this easier for contractors to complete I have included an MS word document template (SMP-template.docx) which includes all the instructions found in the markdown. I also included an example completed SMP (SMP-example.docx).

[cauzm]

Hi @EddyCMWF , thanks for your work, this is all good on my side.

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[corentincarton]

Looks great! Thanks for this :)