Building a Roadmap for a Mid-Sized Community Software Project: Perspectives From Py-ART

The Python ARM Radar Toolkit (Py-ART, [1]) is an environment for interacting with and extracting insight from weather radar data. While it is difficult to track total usage we estimate Py-ART has over a hundred active users with thousands of downloads from GitHub, pip and conda installs. Py-ART has fifteen contributors and a very diverse funding background, led by the Department of Energy's ARM program. It is important for a project of this size to have a vision for how development will proceed over the next five years. The project must serve the needs of ARM stakeholders as well as the needs of the wider community to ensure broad uptake and longevity. This presentation will report the results of the Py-ART roadmap survey and outline a five year plan for development prioritization. The roadmap prioritizes both directly funded development and support for implementation of unsolicited pull requests to the Py-ART package.

[1] Helmus, J.J. & Collis, S.M., (2016). The Python ARM Radar Toolkit (Py-ART), a Library for Working with Weather Radar Data in the Python Programming Language. Journal of Open Research Software. 4(1), p.e25. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jors.119