UKCEH RSE Team Agreement

UKCEH RSE Team Agreement

The following is a set of high-level, guiding principles that the Research Software Engineer (RSE) team has chosen to follow. All current members of the RSE team contributed to these principles, which are open to change and/or extension in the future.

Who we are

• We are research software engineers committed to developing open software solutions to support reproducible science at UKCEH.
• In line with UKCEH’s values of excellence, integrity and teamwork, we seek to understand the scientific activities we support to help build communities between teams at UKCEH.

Team Structure

• We are a small team of 6 people across 3 UKCEH sites.
• We are a flat team in structure - nobody’s work, voice or ideas are more important than anyone else’s.

Management and Workflow

• We work on projects in accordance with our governance structure ()[Insert Link].
• We operate in an agile way and are flexible and open to change in what we do and how we do things.
• We continually look to adopt the latest software development tools and best practices in our workflow, including pair/mob programming and code reviews.
• We help each other with our work and strive to collectively ensure all within the team are well supported.

Professional Development

• We share knowledge with each other and everyone we work with. Continuous learning is critical to how we work.
• We seek to find innovative ways to share our knowledge and enhance everyone’s professional development in the organisation by building communities of practice and learning.
• We ensure that we devote time each week to enhancing our skills through active learning, dissemination or contributing to open-source (Friday?).

Communication

• We are kind to each other and those we work with.
• We use GitHub to discuss, track tasks, and collaborate (as well as stash code). Whatever we do, we seek to be open.
• We recognise life happens - we will only schedule meetings inside core working hours (10am-12pm,2pm-4pm).

Ethics

• We will conduct ourselves in a way that aligns with UKCEH’s core principles and upholds the highest standard of openness, fairness, and inclusivity in the workplace.
• We will challenge unfair, unjust, or exploitative work practices and support each other and those we work with.