The DLR Software Engineering Initiative consist of four main activities:

  1. Community building and experience exchange

  2. Guidelines and tools

  3. Training courses

  4. Consulting

The Sustainable Software Engineering group of DLR performs these activities within DLR as well as within the Helmholtz association via the HIFIS platform.

Community building and experience exchange

Structure of the DLR SE network

The backbone of the DLR Software Engineering community is the SE network. The SE network is an official body of DLR and consists of the DLR Software Engineering Representative as well as a software engineering contact from each DLR institute and facility. They meet up regularly to discuss and work on software engineering topics relevant to DLR.

The community in general is more loosely organized and meets up at a DLR internal Mattermost team as well as face to face at a yearly experience exchange workshop. Information are shared via an DLR wide wiki.

For in-depth information see references.

Guidelines and tools

Checklist of DLR software engineering guidelines

The DLR software engineering guidelines to support researchers to develop sustainable software are described and can be found at guidelines. While the guidelines abstractly describe what should be done, the Sustainable Software Engineering group of DLR actively supports the provision of tools to implement those. Central for this is the DLR GitLab instance.

For in-depth information see references.

Training courses

In person training at DLR

Training courses are offered internally at DLR as well as publicly for everybody within Helmholtz via the HIFIS project. Currently we offer four different training courses:

The training courses are based on the DLR software engineering guidelines and cover the knowledge required to fulfil the recommendations given by those.

The materials of all HIFIS training courses can be found at the Helmholtz GitLab.

Upcoming HIFIS training courses can be found here. A list containing also training courses from other platforms than HIFIS can be found here.

For in-depth information see references.

Consulting

Consultations are offered via the HIFIS projects consultation service as well as DLR intern via project collaborations, commissions, or collegial help.

For in-depth information see references.