Sustainable & Productive: Improving Incentives for Quality Software

Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) software can benefit substantially from an explicit focus on quality improvement. This is especially true as we face increased demands in both modeling and software complexities. At the same time, just desiring improved quality is not sufficient. We must work with the entities that provide CSE research teams with publication venues, funding, and professional recognition in order to increase incentives for improved software quality. In fact, software quality is precisely calibrated to the expectations, explicit and implicit, set by these entities. We will see broad improvements in sustainability and productivity only when publishers, funding agencies and employers raise their expectations for software quality. CSE software community leaders, those who are in a position to inform and influence these entities, have a unique opportunity to broadly and positively impact software quality by working to establish incentives that will spur creative and novel approaches to improve developer productivity and software sustainability.