A Practical Guide to Measuring Project Sustainability

CASS, through the CASS Impact Framework Working Group, aims to help software sustainability organizations (SSOs) understand the status and progress made by supported software projects and the effect those improvements have had on its ability to support scientific discovery. One way of doing this is by identifying and collecting metrics that can help manage stewardship activities.

The CASS Metrics Working Group recently released the first CASS Sustainability Metrics Report, which curates a range of metrics based on existing research in software engineering and software metrics, which can be used to gain a better understanding of a project’s software sustainability and stewardship activities. Many CASS projects may not be familiar with the types of metrics that can be used to measure the different aspects of sustainability, nor how to implement or collect them. This BoF will be an opportunity for projects to gain a better understanding of the available metrics, identify metrics that are of interest and/or applicable, explore ways that the metrics can be collected and viewed, and learn how to interpret the information being provided by the metrics.

As a cross-cutting support group, CORSA is available to aid projects in collecting, understanding, and using metrics. This BoF will also provide projects with an opportunity to let CORSA know how they can help to provide metrics that will be useful and beneficial to the ongoing stewardship of the project’s software.

Presenters

• Greg Watson (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
• Scot Breitenfeld (The HDF Group)