  We present best practices and tools for professionals who support
computational and data intensive (CDI) research projects. The practices
resulted from an initiative that brings together national projects and
university teams that include individual or groups of such professionals. We
focus particularly on practices that differ from those in a general software
engineering context. The paper also describes the initiative , the Xpert
Network , where participants exchange successes, challenges, and general
information about their activities, leading to increased productivity,
efficiency, and coordination in the ever growing community of scientists that
use computational and data-intensive research methods.
