Science Gateway Community Institute’s Consulting Services Program - Lessons for Research Software Engineering Organizations

Sep 12, 2026

Uploaded by Mali

The Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) Consulting Services Program provides embedded technical support to help clients create new science gateways or significantly enhance existing ones through research software engineering expertise. Modeled after XSEDE Extended Collaborative Support Services, SGCI assigns consultants for six months with potential extensions. Across 59 consultations, client exit surveys from 32 of 55 completed projects reported high satisfaction (average 5.62/6) and substantial work acceleration, with consultants enabling over six-fold speedups. Key lessons include multi-service integration, customer relationship management, evaluation tied to KPIs, and consultant soft-skill requirements.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages3

Reading Time1 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

How It Worked

Conclusions for the Research Software Engineering Community

Multiple Services

Customer Relationship Management

Evaluation

Non-Technical Skills

Teamwork

The Science Gateway Community Institute’s Consulting Services Program: Lessons for Research Software Engineering Organizations Marlon Pierce Indiana University [marpierc@iu.edu](marpierc@iu.edu) Sandra Gesing Discovery Partners Institute[sgesing@uillinois.edu](sgesing@uillinois.edu) Michael Zentner San Diego Supercomputer Center [mzentner@ucsd.edu](mzentner@ucsd.edu) Claire Stirm San Diego Supercomputer Center [cstirm@ucsd.edu](cstirm@ucsd.edu) Maytal Dahan Texas Advanced Computing Center, UT Austin [maytal@tacc.utexas.edu](maytal@tacc.utexas.edu) Linda Bailey Hayden Elizabeth City State University [lbhayden@ecsu.edu](lbhayden@ecsu.edu) Introduction The Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) [ 1 ,2] is an NSF Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (S2I2) funded project that leads and supports the science gateway community. Major activities for SGCI include a) sustainability training, including the Focus Week week-long course designed to help science gateway operators develop sustainability plans, and the Jumpstart virtual short-course [3]; b) usability and user experience consulting [3]; c) a community catalog of science gateways and science gateway software [4] ; d) workforce development activities, including a coding institute for students, internship opportunities, and hackathons [5]; e) an annual conference; and f) in-depth technical support for client gateway projects. The goals of SGCI’s Embedded Technical Support component are to help the institute’s clients to create new science gateways or to significantly enhance existing science gateways. Examples of the latter include helping to implement major new capabilities and to implement significant usability improvements suggested by SGCI’s usability consultants. The Embedded Technical Support component was managed by Indiana University and involved research software engineers at San Diego Supercomputer Center, Texas Advanced Computing Center, Indiana University, and Purdue University (through 2019) . Since 2016 , the component has involved 20 research software engineers as consultants and has conducted 59 client consultations. How It Worked Embedded Technical Support is modeled after the XSEDE Extended Collaborative Support Services program [6], with an SGCI consultant assigned to work at 25% effort on a client’s project for six months with possible extensions for up to an additional six months. Potential clients applied for this service through the SGCI website. Projects were taken on a first-come, first-served basis for SGCI’s first five years; SGCI currently uses a paid-only model where the requesting project includes a budget for the consultants. SGCI partnered with the XSEDE program as a Level 2 service provider, which allowed the two programs to cooperatively allocate consultants. In addition to direct requests, SGCI services could be requested by researchers through the XSEDE allocation process, and SGCI clients were frequently directed to XSEDE to obtain additional cluster and cloud computing resources. Client surveys showed that the Embedded Technical Support program was well received and effective. According to exit surveys from 32 out of 55 completed projects, on a scale of 1(lowest score) -6 (highest score) , clients’ satisfaction with their consultant was 5.62 with a standard deviation of 0.62. Similarly, when asked to rate the consultation’s benefit to them on a scale of 1-6 , the average score and standard deviation were 5.54 (0 .75) . When asked how much the SGCI consultant was able to speed up the client's work, the speedup factor average was 6.4 ; that is, the consultants were able to help the client do work over six times faster than the client would have otherwise been able to do. Conclusions for the Research Software Engineering Community SGCI has compiled both analytic and anecdotal conclusions on the Embedded Technical Support program. The following are a sampling of our findings. Multiple Services-SGC

FAQs

What does SGCI’s Embedded Technical Support component aim to achieve for clients?

It helps clients create new science gateways or significantly enhance existing ones. Support includes implementing major capabilities and usability improvements suggested by SGCI usability consultants.

How is Embedded Technical Support structured in terms of consultant effort and duration?

An SGCI consultant is assigned at 25% effort for six months, with possible extensions up to an additional six months.

What evidence indicates client satisfaction and the program’s effectiveness?

Exit surveys from 32 of 55 completed projects show satisfaction averaging 5.62/6. Clients also rated benefits at an average of 5.54/6, and reported consultant speedup factors averaging 6.4.

Sep 12, 2026

Uploaded by Mali