Research Software Management Plan

A research software management plan (RSMP) should address the following three main points:

1. Purpose

What is the current reason or expected end-use for developing the software?

2. Reliability

How are you making sure that your software is reliable and safe to use?

Specifically, should you fail to maintain your software, then:

• Is there a chance/risk of harm to yourself or others? This includes injury, privacy violations, biases, and inappropriate content.
• Is there a chance/risk of harming someone’s reputation? For example, your own, that of your institution, or others.
• Is there a chance/risk of harm to research? Either your own or that of others. This effect could be due to an obvious software failure (“crash”) or a hidden one, for example, returning inconsistent numerical results on different operating systems.

3. Maintenance

How do you plan to make sure that your software keeps working as intended in the long-term?

Software should be functional for as long as it might be used as a standalone tool or dependency. This includes maintenance functions that can extend beyond the lifespan of the original development project and includes fixing bugs, dependency management, operating system compatibility, and security issues.

Impact on Research Software Categories

The three different Research Software Categories (low, medium, mission critical) are loosely defined on whether or not the points above are relevant for the RSMP. Please note that, in practice, each institution/organisation is responsible for defining its own management plans, and as your software evolves, it might need to be treated as a higher category from your initial estimation. Similarly to the Data Management Plan, the RSMP is also a living document.