Enhancing research informatics core user satisfaction through agile practices

Abstract

Objective The Huntsman Cancer Institute Research Informatics Shared Resource (RISR), a software and database development core facility, sought to address a lack of published operational best practices for research informatics cores. It aimed to use those insights to enhance effectiveness after an increase in team size from 20 to 31 full-time equivalents coincided with a reduction in user satisfaction. Materials and Methods RISR migrated from a water-scrum-fall model of software development to agile software development practices, which emphasize iteration and collaboration. RISR’s agile implementation emphasizes the product owner role, which is responsible for user engagement and may be particularly valuable in software development that requires close engagement with users like in science. Results All RISR’s software development teams implemented agile practices in early 2020. All project teams are led by a product owner who serves as the voice of the user on the development team. Annual user survey scores for service quality and turnaround time recorded 9 months after implementation increased by 17% and 11%, respectively. Discussion RISR is illustrative of the increasing size of research informatics cores and the need to identify best practices for maintaining high effectiveness. Agile practices may address concerns about the fit of software engineering practices in science. The study had one time point after implementing agile practices and one site, limiting its generalizability. Conclusions Agile software development may substantially increase a research informatics core facility’s effectiveness and should be studied further as a potential best practice for how such cores are operated.

Hypermedia-based software architecture enables Test-Driven Development

“…The informatics literature has few publications like ours about software engineering challenges. 16 While insufficient research funding for software development is a plausible explanation, evidence also suggests lack of awareness of best practices among many laboratories that build software. 16 , 41 , 44 More work is needed to increase the reliability of applications arising from academic informatics units, enabling greater contributions to their institutions’ operations.…”

“… 33 , 34 TDD’s low adoption is typically blamed on unfamiliarity or low adoption of automated testing in general. 16 In our experience, ambiguity about how a team should integrate it into their work is a barrier. TDD may be more likely to succeed when a software application’s architecture is designed for it, 18 but what that means needs greater definition.…”

“…Adoption of agile software development 14 , 15 was our first step in addressing reliability, as we previously reported. 16 Our next step is integrating automated testing 17 into CORE Browser. Evidence suggests that automated testing leads to fewer defects, more frequent deployment, and more rapid feature development.…”