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Title: The Many Faces of a Software Engineer in a Research Community

Conference ·
OSTI ID:1178905

The ability to gather, analyze and make decisions based on real world data is changing nearly every field of human endeavor. These changes are particularly challenging for software engineers working in a scientific community, designing and developing large, complex systems. To avoid the creation of a communications gap (almost a language barrier), the software engineers should possess an ‘adaptive’ skill. In the science and engineering research community, the software engineers must be responsible for more than creating mechanisms for storing and analyzing data. They must also develop a fundamental scientific and engineering understanding of the data. This paper looks at the many faces that a software engineer should have: developer, domain expert, business analyst, security expert, project manager, tester, user experience professional, etc. Observations made during work on a power-systems scientific software development are analyzed and extended to describe more generic software development projects.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1178905
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-97287
Resource Relation:
Conference: 31st Annual Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC 2013), October 14-16, 2013, Portland, Oregon, 231-238
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English