Enhancing research informatics core user satisfaction through agile practices

Lay Summary The Huntsman Cancer Institute Research Informatics Shared Resource (RISR), a software and database development core facility, sought to address a lack of published operational best practices for research informatics cores. It aimed to use those insights to enhance effectiveness after a substantial increase in team size coincided with a reduction in user satisfaction as measured by annual user surveys. We hypothesized that adopting agile software development practices, which have become standard outside of science but have low adoption in science including biomedicine, may address the problem. RISR implemented agile practices for its software and database development operations in 2020, and user surveys later that year suggest that user satisfaction improved. The article describes the potential benefits of agile techniques for software and database development in research informatics cores, RISR's implementation of those practices, and the survey results. The article discusses limitations and generalizability of the analysis, and it makes recommendations for implementing agile practices. This work may assist similar cores in optimizing their effectiveness, and it may help the informatics community develop operational best practices for research informatics cores. Objective The Huntsman Cancer Institute Research Informatics Shared Resource (RISR), a software and database development core facility, sought to address a lack of published operational best practices for research informatics cores. It aimed to use those insights to enhance effectiveness after an increase in team size from 20 to 31 full-time equivalents coincided with a reduction in user satisfaction. Materials and Methods RISR migrated from a water-scrum-fall model of software development to agile software development practices, which emphasize iteration and collaboration. RISR's agile implementation emphasizes the product owner role, which is responsible for user engagement and may be particularly valuable in software development that requires close engagement with users like in science. Results All RISR's software development teams implemented agile practices in early 2020. All project teams are led by a product owner who serves as the voice of the user on the development team. Annual user survey scores for service quality and turnaround time recorded 9 months after implementation increased by 17% and 11%, respectively. Discussion RISR is illustrative of the increasing size of research informatics cores and the need to identify best practices for maintaining high effectiveness. Agile practices may address concerns about the fit of software engineering practices in science. The study had one time point after implementing agile practices and one site, limiting its generalizability. Conclusions Agile software development may substantially increase a research informatics core facility's effectiveness and should be studied further as a potential best practice for how such cores are operated.