IIC Seminar 4/26: Bioinformatics Software Development with Agile Methods

IIC Seminar Announcement

Wednesday, April 26 at 3:30 pm

60 Oxford St Rm 330
Cambridge, MA

Bioinformatics Software Development with Agile Methods

Moses Hohman
Associate Director of BIoinformatics and Software Engineering
Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center
Northwestern University, Chicago, IL

David Kane
Technical Director, Health Research Systems
SRA International, Fairfax, VA

Software is increasingly important to scientific work. Scientists who  
don't develop software themselves often collaborate with others who  
develop software for them. Usually the focus is on the science rather  
than on the process of designing and delivering the software.  
However, increased project complexity leads to software risk that can  
afect scientists' ability to deliver results.

"Traditional" software engineering methodologies attempt to eliminate  
risk by requiring detailed, upfront documentation of requirements and  
design, and then resisting deviation from these plans. Experience  
building scientific software, however, suggests that the exploratory  
nature of scientific work introduces unavoidable uncertainty into  
software requirements.  Scientists are accustomed to tinkering with  
their research tools, so the scientific process must be open to  
iterative change.

In this talk bioinformaticians Moses Hohman and David Kane discuss  
how they have used agile software development methods to address  
these challenges.  Agile is an iterative approach to software  
development that relies on tight collaboration and automation to keep  
pace with dynamic environments.  The presenters will provide a brief  
introduction to agile methods, describe their experiences applying  
them in a scientific context, and discuss lessons learned.