This document provides an overview of the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) project. It summarizes the project's goals, activities, and outcomes over multiple phases from conceptualization to ongoing execution. Key aspects include establishing processes and gauging interest during the design phase, then scaling services and growing partnerships to cope with high demand during ongoing execution. Regular meetings and tools support agile management of the project. The SGCI helps science gateway stakeholders through expertise, software frameworks, and community building.

1. Award Number
ACI-1547611sciencegateways.org
PI Nancy Wilkins-Diehr
San Diego Supercomputer Center
wilkinsn@sdsc.edu
Science Gateways Community Institute

2. • EAGER grant 2009-2012
• Conceptualization phase 2012-2016
• Implementation phase 2016-present
• Design phase first 2 years
• Execution phase began Aug 1, 2018
2

3. Publications
along the
way
• Nancy Wilkins-Diehr, Michael Zentner, Marlon Pierce, Maytal Dahan, Katherine Lawrence, Linda Hayden,
and Nayiri Mullinix. 2018. The Science Gateways Community Institute at Two Years. In Proceedings of
the Practice and Experience on Advanced Research Computing (PEARC '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA,
Article 53, 8 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3219104.3219142
• N. Wilkins-Diehr and T. Daniel Crawford, "NSF's Inaugural Software Institutes: The Science Gateways
Community Institute and the Molecular Sciences Software Institute," Computing in Science &
Engineering, vol. 20, no. 5, 2018, pp. 26-38. doi:10.1109/MCSE.2018.05329813.
• Gesing, S., Wilkins-Diehr, N., Dahan, M., Lawrence, K., Zentner, M., Pierce, M., Hayden, L.B., and Marru,
S. (2017) Science Gateways: The Long Road to the Birth of an Institute Proc. of HICSS-50 (50th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences), 4-7 January 2017, Hilton Waikoloa, HI, USA, http://
hdl.handle.net/10125/41919.
• Wilkins-Diehr, N and S Sanielevici, J Alameda, J Cazes, L Crosby, M Pierce, R Roskies. "An Overview of
the XSEDE Extended Collaborative Support Program". High Performance Computer Applications 6th
International Conference, ISUM 2015, Mexico City, Mexico, March 9-13, 2015, Revised Selected Papers
Gitler, Isidoro, Klapp, Jaime (Eds.) Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-32243-8, 3-13,
2016. doi://10.1007/978-3-319-32243-8.
• Lawrence, K. A., Zentner, M., Wilkins-Diehr, N., Wernert, J. A., Pierce, M., Marru, S., and Michael, S.
(2015) Science gateways today and tomorrow: positive perspectives of nearly 5000 members of the
research community. Concurrency Computat.: Pract. Exper., 27:4252-4268. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cpe.
3526.
• Katherine A. Lawrence, Nancy Wilkins-Diehr, Julie A. Wernert, Marlon Pierce, Michael Zentner, and
Suresh Marru. 2014. "Who Cares about Science Gateways?: A Large-Scale Survey of Community Use
and Needs." In Proceedings of the 9th Gateway Computing Environments Workshop (GCE '14). IEEE
Press, Piscataway, NJ, USA, 1-4. DOI=10.1109/GCE.2014.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/GCE.2014.11
• Lawrence, K.A., Wilkins-Diehr, N., 2012. "Roadmaps, Not Blueprints: Paving the Way to Science
Gateway Success." XSEDE12 Conference, July 16-20, 2012. ACM Digital Library, DOI= http://
doi.acm.org/10.1145/2335755.2335837.
• Lawrence, K., and Wilkins-Diehr, N. "Research Report: Making science gateways a success." Featured
report at International Science Grid This Week, January 26, 2011, http://www.isgtw.org/feature/research-
report-making-science-gateways-success.
• Wilkins-Diehr, N., and Lawrence, K. A. 2011. "Opening Science Gateways to Future Success: The
Challenges of Gateway Sustainability." Gateway Computing Environments Workshop (GCE), 2010
(Supercomputing '10 in New Orleans, LA), 14 Nov. 2010. IEEE Computer Society (Xplore Digital Library).
3

4. Who we are
Principal Investigator/
Project Director
Nancy Wilkins-Diehr, UCSD
Scientific
Software
Collaborative
Maytal Dahan,
TACC
Staff
Community
Engagement &
Exchange
Katherine Lawrence,
U Michigan
Campus Gateway
Groups
Sandra Gesing,
Notre Dame
Workforce
Development
Linda Hayden,
Elizabeth City State
Staff
Incubator
Michael Zentner,
Purdue
Staff Consultants
Extended
Developer
Support
Marlon Pierce,
Indiana U
Staff
Nancy Maron
and
Trusted CI
Steering
Committee
Ann Zimmerman• 92% of budget spent on staff
• Most leads at 25%, PI at 40%

5. • Design phase, slightly revised/simplified for implementation
phase
• Background and purpose
• Work Breakdown Structure
• Goals, Tactics, Metrics
• Project and reporting schedule
• Management and budget
• Operational plans
• HR, software development, community engagement, sustainability, security,
diversity
• Project schedule, risk register, risk to metric mapping
5
Project Execution Plan

6. 6
Goals,
Tactics,
Metrics

7. 7

8. Risk register
8

9. Reviews and reporting
9
Monthly reports, monthly calls with NSF for first 18-months
Review after 1 year (July 2018) with
NSF program officers
Meant to help us prepare for a successful execution
phase review
• 2-day virtual review, 42 overnight questions!!
Panel reviews at 18, 30, 42 (gating
factor for 5-year renewal) and 54
months (present renewal proposal)
2-day in person review at lead site
<10 reviewers
More manageable overnight questions
Recommended move to execution phase

10. Goals from
PEP:
10
Review criteria Incubator
Extended Developer
Support
Scientific Software
Collaborative
Community
Engagement and
Exchange
Workforce
Development
Management
New science and
broader impacts
Broader impact
through training &
seeding community
interactions
Amplifying the efforts
of accepted EDS
projects
Broader impact
through making
existing gateways
more easily found
Broader impact
through well attended
conferences,
webinars, case
studies
Broad impact through
student placement in
projects
Addressing Issues
that motivated SGCI
formation
Consulting advice Hands-on help
Gateway and
software visibility
Development of
community
Student
development,
gateways in the
classroom
Project direction
Success metrics All areas have metrics
Changes from the
community
All areas collect and adapt to community feedback, external evaluator provides a higher level perspective
Broad buy-in
among the software
user community
(i.e. gateway
developers)
Strong interest in programs
Growth in catalog
entries, pageviews
Strong interest in programs
Strong interest in
collaboration letters
Sustainability plans
Sustainability
consulting
Gateways
sustainable as a
result of project work
Find what you need
through catalog
Partner program,
campus gateway
groups, online
materials, community
that helps one
another
Training future
generations
Execution of
sustainability plan
Software
integration and
interoperability
Technology coaching
during planning
phase
Common developers
across multiple
projects instilling
interoperability
practices
Published APIs
Case studies, how
to’s
Learning through
internshipsContainerized
versions of software
Consensus among
developers of
gateway building
software
Training on strong
development
practices
Implementation using
strong development
practices
Growth in software
listings, Affiliates
Well attended
webinars
disseminating
common software
practices
Provide leadership,
community support, and
education that increase
the capabilities of
science gateway
stakeholders
Provide expertise and
assistance to science
gateway stakeholders
Provide software
frameworks and
components to science
gateway stakeholders
Project Assessment
18-month review criteria (vertical
column) mapped to WBS, color-
coded with SGCI goals

11. • Weekly 90 min leadership team meetings
• Customer updates
• Metrics review
• Any data-driven decisions that need to be made?
• Status update on quarterly goals, todos from past week (on track or off track)
• Any issues that need to be addressed?
• 60 minutes for in depth issues discussion
• Prioritized by the group
• Usually get through 3 issues
• Recent examples – steering committee selection, follow-up on SC recommendations from last meeting,
Cybertraining RFP response, also review development and publishing opportunities for staff
• Rotate meeting lead responsibilities among the team
• Quarterly planning
• 2-day virtual meeting
• Review past quarter, select goals for next
11
Lightweight, agile management
Staff uniformly feel these meetings
move us forward and are among the
best they attend

12. Many tools used for light-weight project
management
And extensive team communication!
12
The Hubspot
CRM was a key
addition for us

13. • Design phase
• Processes established
• Early advertising
• Tools installed
• Demand/interest established
• Gauging risk and adapting services
• Execution phase
• Coping with high demand!
• Scaling strategies
• Growing what we can do
• Investigating easy fee-for-service
models
• Recruiting others to help researchers
build gateways
• Campuses, affiliates
• Build community so that clients and
others help one another
• Larger scale advertising
13
Lessons learned:
• All the planning paid off, ideas/services really resonate with the community
• Clients are varied!
• Project size, funding source, goals
• Engagement methods/durations vary
• Committed team who is putting much more into this than what they are paid

14. Shameless self-promotion
We help people build better gateways, we are open for referrals
• Request services
• Short term consulting, longer term gateway building
• Find or list gateways or gateway building software
• catalog.sciencegateways.org
• Gateways 2019
• Sept 23-25, San Diego
• Held at the Catamaran in conjunction with international
eScience conference
• Request a Letter of Commitment to leverage
existing SGCI offerings in proposal – any agency!
• Become involved as a partner or affiliate
• Train students via the internship program
www.sciencegateways.org
This work is supported National Science Foundation grant ACI-1547611.