The Software Development Best Practices Working Group of the ELIXIR tools platform has been working on the development of the Software Management Plan (SMP) template that can be used across ELIXIR projects.A software management plan can help to formalise a set of structures and goals that will facilitate software accessibility and reusability in the short, medium and long term. At present software management plans are relatively new for life science research software proposals, though many of the elements discussed would be expected in standard proposals. The software management plan described during the webinar has a form of a checklist that can be filled in by the Research Software Engineer (RSE) or Project managers and it is important to tailor a format that everyone will use.