As the information technology industry gains maturity, the number of software systems having moved into maintenance is rapidly growing. Often these systems are also potential candidates for outsourcing. However, adequate information regarding size, complexity, reliability, maintainability etc. of these systems is often missing. This makes the task of estimating maintenance efforts for any such system difficult for the organization owning the systems as well as for a software services vendor bidding to outsource maintenance of the system. This is further compounded by human and management factors related to maintenance activities such as management focus, client attitude, engineers' attitude, the need for multi-location support teams etc. These factors make the problem of objectively estimating software maintenance effort almost intractable.We submit that software maintenance is of equal if not more fundamental importance to the software industry, and has not received the attention it deserves, especially in the context of estimation models. This paper describes a holistic approach towards a study of the factors affecting the effort involved in maintenance of existing software systems. It describes how one could build a systems dynamics model to predict the effort involved to maintain a software system, based on qualitative and qualitative inputs.
Software lifecycle management is a complex phenomenon with each stage posing its unique technical and other challenges. Maintenance and enhancement of software brings in its own share of complexities to this phase. While uncertainties associated with software baseline in themselves pose a huge challenge in planning and estimation of maintenance activities, there are several other factors that contribute to overall success of software maintenance project especially in an outsourcing scenario. This paper brings out the results of an analysis of some such factors, their interrelationship and influence on software maintenance activities and effort.
The rapid growth of the Internet in the recent past has encouraged global deployment of work by an increasing number of organizations around the world, and they are now in a better position to outsource their IT functions to specialist vendors. With the passage of time, we find more and more software systems moving into the maintenance phase. Such software systems have become an increasingly significant expenditure for businesses. Consequently, these are often potential candidates for outsourcing. Inadequate information regarding the size, complexity, reliability, maintainability, etc., of these systems often makes the task of estimating the maintenance effort a challenge. Other human and organizational factors, typical to maintenance activities, such as organization climate, customer attitude, engineers' attitude, the need for multi‐location support teams, etc., make the situation even more complex. In this paper we present the results of an empirical study carried out to identify such factors and study their influence on the maintenance effort. We classify these factors in four categories, namely system baseline, maintenance team, customer's attitude and organizational climate. We also propose a model which can help a practitioner to predict and control the impact on maintenance effort, based on the strengths of these factors. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
IT outsourcing, which commenced as a cost reduction operation, has now become an essential parameter for measuring the operational efficiency of an organization. An increasing number of operational IT systems are moving into the maintenance phase, becoming potential candidates for outsourcing. Human and organizational factors, typical to maintenance activities, such as organization climate, customer attitude, engineers' attitude, etc., have a significant influence on software maintenance effort and make the task of effort estimation complex. In this paper we present the results of an empirical study, carried out to identify and study the influence of such factors on software maintenance effort.
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