Risk-Based Software Development Practices for CREATE Multiphysics HPC Software Applications

The January/February 2016 issue of this magazine presented descriptions of the US Defense Department's Computational Research and Engineering Acquisition Tools and Environments (CREATE) program and the software engineering approach for managing its programmatic risks. This article describes the software engineering methodology deployed to manage the development risks faced by CREATE, that is, the risks arising in the product development cycle and environment. The approach here is similar to the one for the management of CREATE programmatic risks and is based on a set of shared development practices. The management of these risks is especially challenging in the environment of distributed teams developing physics-based, system-of-systems, high-performance computing software anchored in the three military departments. The CREATE experience provides a concrete example of successful implementation of best software engineering practices in a computational science and engineering milieu that has historically questioned the value of traditional software engineering wisdom and has resisted the adoption of plan-centered software engineering processes. It has allowed CREATE to adopt important software engineering practices such as use case-centered requirements management, use of pilot projects to align customer and developer expectations, continuous code integration of modular components, and scalable product support models, among others.