Software maintenance is as important as the development itself and can span years and different teams, which is why it is so important to configure it correctly.
Software maintenance is as important as software development. It allows solutions to adapt to changing technological and business situations.
Traditionally, software development outsourcing companies advise their clients to use software maintenance services to achieve better and consistent system performance. This is because many of the software improvements happen during this phase and this is why a successful development partnership cannot end with the product launch.
In fact, according to the author of “ Software Engineering Facts and Fallacies ”, maintenance typically uses an average of 60% of overall software costs and “is probably the most important phase of the software life cycle”.
Software maintenance helps in expanding programs. Unfortunately, it's easy to overlook the transition from a software development team to a maintenance team. Organizations are often so focused on finishing a project that they forget about post-project management and maintenance tasks.
What is software maintenance?
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) includes a major management procedure called software maintenance. The main objective of software maintenance is to resolve faults and improve system performance by modifying and updating software applications after deployment.
After the development and implementation of a program, software maintenance operations occur. As a result, minimizing errors, deleting unusable developments, and using advanced development methodologies improves software performance.
Software maintenance, on the other hand, is not linked to the post-development phase. Development teams must ensure that their program is secure and scalable, as well as making it error-free during construction. If they don't keep adding new features and fixing problems to the software, it could become obsolete before it even launches.
The 4 Different Types of Software Maintenance
There are 4 types of software maintenance related to different causes and objectives.
- Corrective – Corrective software maintenance is the practice of keeping an application active and operational. End users are those who typically notice errors in design, logic, or code.
- Adaptive – Changes in the environment can affect software applications. This could be due to hardware upgrades, operating system upgrades, or infrastructure changes. Supplier modifications, links to new or existing ancillary systems, and even industry safety or compliance policies are examples of environmental changes.
- Perfect – Changes in perfect software maintenance are generally evolutionary. As end users become familiar with a software program, they begin to make wish lists for new features. In certain circumstances, perfect software maintenance includes eliminating superfluous or redundant functionality.
- Preventative – Preventative software maintenance is similar to applying a bandage to a wound. It involves making small, incremental adjustments to software applications so that they can function for longer periods of time.
Moving a project from development to maintenance
Transferring a project from a development team to a maintenance team is often complicated and difficult. Fortunately, there are some best practices to follow for all changes.
- Choose solid team leaders – Project team leaders such as development leads , business analysts , and other stakeholders maintain contact with maintenance team leaders. Knowing who to turn to for advice and decisions can reduce risk and facilitate a seamless transition. Team leaders should talk about how the new software application will affect or change current service level agreements (SLAs).
- Prepare a transition budget – Companies must remember to budget for the transition from development to maintenance of a project. This is not a practice they should rush or ignore. Companies must make sure all stakeholders are aware of the need for a solid support strategy. This budget can also cover the need for additional support workers after implementation is complete.
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Start early – When moving projects from development to maintenance, avoid the “drop-and-run method”. Development companies should allow maintenance teams to follow up with development teams well before they finish the task, involve them in important meetings and communications, and keep everyone informed about important decisions.
Development teams will better understand the current state of the existing architecture and have the ability to make better decisions if maintenance team members use software applications present from the beginning. - Communication – Companies must remember that their maintenance team may not fully understand why they make certain decisions, have certain priorities or maintain certain expectations. The maintenance team can better support the software and have empathy and ownership when answering future questions from end users by communicating these types of details.
- Documentation – The support procedure relies heavily on documentation. To direct future support work, skilled technology experts learn to anticipate documented specifics. They must consider end users who may be looking for justifications for creating features or functionality and the reasoning behind decisions.
An additional benefit of extensive documentation is that it aids future development initiatives. Development teams and companies should not assume that the same developers will always work on updates or bug fixes.
Documentation elements to include:
- Overview
- References
- Premises
- Contacts
- Licensing and agreements
- Diagrams and prototypes with functional and feature lists and summaries
- Configuration details such as directory structure and administrative roles
- Startup, shutdown, backup, recovery, and archiving are all operational elements.
- Security details
Knowledge Transfer
While documentation is an important aspect of the knowledge transfer process, it is not enough. The difficulty is sharing knowledge between existing and future teams and, at the same time, valuing the work of everyone in each team, knowing that each person has knowledge in the area that others may not have.
Companies should make sure that the change procedure includes enough time in the calendar for some overlap between existing and new maintenance management teams, where possible. As support requests begin to come in, having a resource that your maintenance team can turn to for guidance and assistance can be very beneficial.
This also means that the duration of the service must remain explicitly specified and stated to all parties involved. The ability to create a clear line encourages ownership and allows both teams to move forward correctly.
Although each software development project is different in terms of scale and complexity, each transition process helps with standardization and learning. When post-implementation and transition meetings take place with maintenance teams, everyone has the opportunity to review lessons learned and establish best practices.
