  With the increasing amount of data and use of computation in science,
software has become an important component in many different domains. Computing
is now being used more often and in more aspects of scientific work including
data acquisition, simulation, analysis, and visualization. To ensure
reproducibility, it is important to capture the different computational
processes used as well as their executions. VisTrails is an open-source
scientific workflow system for data analysis and visualization that seeks to
address the problem of integrating varied tools as well as automatically
documenting the methods and parameters employed. Growing from a specific
project need to supporting a wide array of users required close collaborations
in addition to new research ideas to design a usable and efficient system. The
VisTrails project now includes standard software processes like unit testing
and developer documentation while serving as a base for further research. In
this paper, we describe how VisTrails has developed and how our efforts in
structuring and advertising the system have contributed to its adoption in many
domains.
