The review of the use and development of the Mantid project at European Neutron Sources.
The Mantid project has been in continual development for over 11 years. It is a collaboratively developed framework with a defined project governance and official membership from ISIS, ORNL (SNS & HFIR), ESS, ILL. Contributions from, and partial use of Mantid from the following facilities that are not officially a member of the mantid project: FRMII, ANSTO and CSNS.
Mantid is a collaboratively developed and maintained framework which is now the chosen core framework for data reduction and ISIS, ILL and ESS. The framework is used on a number of instruments at FRMII. The decision to collaborate on a single framework by neutron facilities represents a high level choice by facility management to develop a sustainable open source framework for data reduction that is not at risk of single point failure.
As such the project represents a major international investment in scientific computing for neutron facilities. The project delivers mission critical software that forms a core component of the user operations at key neutron facilities in Europe and the United States. There is considerable interest from both the PMB and facility directors in ensuring that the investment made in the development of Mantid represents good scientific, operational and financial value. With strong support of facility management the project Management Board of Mantid have commissioned a review of the current status of the project. It has been decided that it would be best accomplished by undertaking reviews independently in Europe and the United States. This review will focus solely on the European aspect of Mantid. It is the right time to convene a group of experts to assess the current status of the project and the future direction in respect of a number of key areas:
- Impact to science programme.
- Project strategy.
- Project Management and project governance.
