The document outlines the process and structure of the Extended Developer Support (EDS) program aimed at aiding the community in building and improving software gateways. Key steps involve client requests, interviews, work planning, and consultations that typically last 6-12 months, with specific deliverables and milestones tracked via Jira. The program emphasizes client involvement and long-term sustainability of the gateways created or enhanced through the support provided.

1. Award Number
ACI-1547611
Extended Developer
Support All Hands
Meeting
March 15th, 2017

2. 2
Science&Gateways&Community&Institute
Designed(to(help(the(community(build(gateways(more(effectively
8
Diverse'expertise'
on#demand
Longer!term,&
hands!on#support
Student'
opportunities*&*
educator)resources
Sharing(
experiences)&)
knowledge)as)a)
community
Software)&)visibility)
for$gateways

3. Extended Developer Support
• We are programmers, designers, architects,
hackers, problem solvers, engineers, makers,
advisors, gurus, etc.
• We help create new gateways
• We help improve existing gateways
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4. Example EDS Consultations
• Use an existing framework like HUBzero, Agave,
Apache Airavata, Galaxy, Jupyter, etc to create a
new gateway.
• Help a client make technology choices for
building a gateway
• Help a client improve an existing gateway
• This may include technologies that you are not familiar
with.
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5. What We Don’t Do: All the work
• EDS consultations are time and effort limited.
• Consultations should be about 6-12 months and
about 25% of your effort, on average
• The client must be involved at all steps, must be
able to use what we’ve done after the
consultation is over.
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6. 6
The EDS Process

7. Step 1: Clients Request Support
• http://sciencegateways.org/services/gateway-
services-request-form/
• If you know of any potential SGCI clients, send
them here.
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8. Step 2: The Initial Interview
• Marlon conducts these.
• Goal is to understand the project and its
requirements
• What are the major deliverables?
• What is the timeline?
• Is the client ready for support?
• All consultations have a Google Drive folder
• Notes from initial and follow up interviews
• Copy of the work plan template
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9. Step 3: Assign a Consultant
• Sometimes this is obvious
• Agave projects go to Agave developers, for example
• If you recruit a project, you will be assigned to it.
• Load balancing across EDS consultants
• Sometimes it is not obvious
• I will post these to the EDS staff list for volunteers.
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10. Step 4: Hand Off Interview
• The consultant conduct a second interview with
the client
• I attend to help bridge the interviews.
• In some cases, this can be skipped.
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11. Step 5: Work Plan
• More about this in a moment
• All projects should complete a work plan within
2-4 weeks.
• Work plans should last 6 months with possible 6
month extensions.
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12. Step 6: Work
• Transfer the milestones from your work plan into
Jira
• Update milestones in Jira each month
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13. Step 7: Stop Working
• All consultations come to an end after 6-12
months.
• Submit a brief final report
• Nancy Wilkins-Diehr will conduct exit interviews.
• Work can also end prematurely
• We couldn’t articulate a work plan
• The consultation just didn’t work out
• Other causes: tell me
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14. How We Are Judged
• How many consultations have we conducted?
• Were we successful?
• Short term: did we accomplish the main deliverables?
• Long term: is the gateway sustained? Growing?
• Are there opportunities for more in-depth, funded
work?
• Did we get referrals?
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15. 15
The Work Plan

16. Work Plan Template
• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aVmctdnm
E_tdXA1Z5IzfO52gvPOoS0Mf3HeHzRDNEUw/e
dit
• I will copy this into each consultation folder in
Google Drive for you and the client to edit.
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17. Work Plan Section: Deliverables
• Each project should have 1-3 concrete
deliverables.
• These are specific things that the consultation
will accomplish in 6-12 months.
• We will identify these in the first interviews.
• Inability to do this is a red flag
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18. Work Plan Section: Milestones
• You should have 1 milestone per month, about 6
milestones total.
• Milestones go into Jira.
• More about this later
• Milestones help you reach the deliverables.
• You should be able to know when you are done.
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19. Work Plan Section: External Driving
Deliverables and Constraints
• Will the client be going on sabbatical in 2
months? Is the postdoc leaving? Does a postdoc
need to be hired? Is the grant ending? Is the
grant starting?
• These external factors can positively or
negatively affect the consultation, so we need to
make sure we know what they are.
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20. Work Plan Section: Outreach
Deliverables
• Identify opportunities to publicize the work to the
gateway’s community
• These may help drive the work and the timeline.
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21. Work Plan Sections: Metrics and
Analytics, Citations
• Metrics: The client should think about the right
way to measure the success of the gateway.
• We should help make recommendations
• The SGCI Incubator should provide general guidelines
• Citations:
• Gateways should cite the SGCI in papers. This helps
us track our long term impact.
• Gateways have multiple opportunities to do this
• Gateways conference series (SGCI sponsored)
• PEARC
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22. Work Plan Section: Resources
• The client identifies who will be doing the work
from her/his team.
• This is short but very important.
• You identify here who you will be working with.
• Who answers your emails, etc?
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23. 23
SGCI Jira

24. Jira Overview
• Purpose: be a living version of the work plan
• Update it to help me know how things are going.
• Modify milestones as needed. The work plan isn’t set
in stone.
• All EDS consultations have two Jira entries.
• Do you have your account?
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25. Consultation Epics
• I own this.
• It tracks the overall workflow of the consultation.
• It is linked to a Task
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26. Jira Tasks
• You own this
• I create and assign it to you.
• Create a subtask for each milestone
• This includes technical and outreach milestones
• Update milestone subtasks each month at least.
• Close subtasks that are done.
• You can add or modify milestones
• But don’t delete
• Mark as “Won’t fix”
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27. I have a few slides to prompt this.
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What Are Your Questions
and Concerns?

28. Communication Flow
• After you are assigned to a client, I do not
directly discuss the consultation with the client.
• You are the main point of contact.
• Tell me if things are not going well.
• Client is unresponsive
• Deliverables are not realistic
• You need more help
• etc
• Tell me if things are going well
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29. What If You Don’t Have a Project?
• Recruit clients
• We have other opportunities
• Develop technical material for outreach and training
• Some technical work within the SGCI itself
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30. What’s the Best Way to Stay in Touch?
• I need to hear from you
• Progress, problems, plans
• One-on-one calls every 2-3 months?
• Regular team-wide calls?
• About 1/month
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31. Other Topics
• Do you feel like you understand the overall
scope and goals the the SGCI?
• What can we do better?
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