DOI: 10.5061/dryad.00000004v
title: Enhancing research informatics core user satisfaction through agile practices

description: Objective: The Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) 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
 nine 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. Conclusion: 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.
description: We used Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI)'s annual user survey
 of its shared resources to evaluate the impact of the Research Informatics
 Shared Resource (RISR)'s new structure in its first year. The survey
 is administered by the HCI Research Administration office and is
 distributed through Survey Monkey to cancer center members and recent
 users of at least one HCI shared resource. While the survey asks many
 questions that applied to RISR, the questions that are the focus of this
 analysis are listed below: Overall, how
 would you rate the quality of the service/product you received from the
 Research Informatics Shared Resource? Answers: Exceptional, high, average,
 poor, unacceptable Overall, how would you rate the
 turnaround time for receiving data, products or other services from the
 Research Informatics Shared Resource? Answers: Exceptional, high, average,
 poor, unacceptable The user survey was
 open between September 11 and September 24. Thus, it provided feedback
 nine months after RISR introduced agile practices into its operations. A
 total of 17 respondents answered the questions above out of 52 identified
 RISR users (33% response rate).
description: # Enhancing research informatics core user satisfaction through agile
 practices
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.00000004v](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.00000004v) DATA OVERVIEW The dataset contains a subset of the results from the Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI, [https://healthcare.utah.edu/huntsmancancerinstitute/](https://healthcare.utah.edu/huntsmancancerinstitute/) research shared resource annual user survey at the University of Utah ([https://www.utah.edu/](https://www.utah.edu/). The survey is administered by the HCI Research Administration office and is distributed through Survey Monkey to cancer center members and recent users of at least one HCI shared resource. This dataset is from two questions asked about the HCI Research Informatics Shared Resource (RISR, [https://risr.hci.utah.edu/](https://risr.hci.utah.edu/): 1\. Overall, how would you rate the quality of the service/product you received from the Research Informatics Shared Resource?     Possible answers: exceptional, high, average, poor, unacceptable 2\. Overall, how would you rate the turnaround time for receiving data, products or other services from the Research Informatics Shared Resource?       Possible answers: exceptional, high, average, poor, unacceptable DATA FILE Rows 2 and 3: Service quality and turnaround, percentage of respondents who answered exceptional or high, for survey years 2013-2020. Row 4: Number of users that RISR supported in survey years 2013-2020. The number of users in 2014 is unavailable. Row 5: Overall number of respondents for questions 1 and 2. Rows 7-11: Number of respondents per answer to question 1 (Quality), for survey years 2013-2020. Row 12: Number of respondents total for question 1, for survey years 2013-2020. Rows 14-18: Number of respondents per answer to question 2 (Turnaround), for survey years 2013-2020. Row 19: Number of respondents total for question 2, for survey years 2013-2020.