10 quick tips for making your software outlive your job

TL;DR

This paper offers ten practical tips for researchers to ensure their research software remains usable and maintained after their departure, addressing risks from personnel loss and institutional changes.

Contribution

It provides a set of actionable strategies specifically aimed at making research software sustainable beyond individual researchers' involvement.

Findings

Ten actionable tips for software sustainability.

Strategies to mitigate risks from researcher turnover.

Guidelines for long-term software maintainability.

Abstract

Loss of key personnel has always been a risk for research software projects. Key members of the team may have to step away due to illness or burnout, to care for a family member, from a loss of financial support, or because their career is going in a new direction. Today, though, political and financial changes are putting large numbers of researchers out of work simultaneously, potentially leaving large amounts of research software abandoned. This article presents ten tips to help researchers ensure that the software they have built will continue to be usable after they have left their present job -- whether in the course of voluntary career moves or researcher mobility, but particularly in cases of involuntary departure due to political or institutional changes.