A survey of development practices in high performance computing applications

In this survey, we seek to distill what is currently scattered knowledge about software practices that play a key role in success of scientific software projects. To do so, we use three methods in order to examine a set of well-managed applications that have been the richest source of engagement in productivity efforts. First, the published works that have resulted from these projects are investigated and provide information on the research areas encompassed and the citation counts that provide insight into the popularity and size of the user base. The second method is through interviews conducted with leading developers and group managers for a subset of projects. These interviews provide insights into the characteristics of the teams, their development tools and methods, and the challenges that they face. The third method is a quantitative analysis of the code base repositories that is capable of tracking the development tasks and communications performed by the principal developers.