Session

DescriptionThe discipline of scientific software development, maintenance and use has incorporated an increasing diversity of skills. Early products were typically developed by single "heroes" or small teams of domain experts. More recently, teams have increasingly included computer science and mathematics expertise to improve algorithmic choice and implementation, and software engineering expertise to improve software design, use of tools and new workflows. In addition to factors associated with individual software teams, software ecosystems (based on software stacks, disciplines, and/or other community identification) have become more prevalent and visible, with common policies, practices, and priorities across teams and a broad interest in sustaining developer and user communities. For community open source projects, community engagement expertise is also needed. This responsibility can be an explicit team role for large projects, but for smaller projects is more often an additional role that one or more developers take on. In this minisymposium we explore both possible and demonstrated successes resulting from introducing expertise in social and cognitive sciences, organizational psychology, community development and policies, and other human factors fields.