Developing a software maintenance strategy? Some tips on where to start.
May 3, 2012 Leave a comment
There are several places where you can find information on developing a software maintenance strategy.
Two common software process models are ITIL and CMMI. ITIL is a set of best practices for IT services. If your organization provides IT services, including providing a service desk, ITIL helps to provide practices to help them develop their strategy (ITIL, 2012). CMMI is a process improvement framework that can be used for both development and maintenance organizations. CMMI’s goals are to identify strengths and weaknesses and to turn those weak process areas into strengths (SEI, 2012). Determining your approach comes from what the goals of the client are for their product. ITIL and CMMI can help.
For a set of standards, you can look to ISO. ISO/IEC 14764:2006 provides details for the management of software maintenance applications, including for planning, execution and control, review and evaluation, and closure of the maintenance process (ISO, 2011). It can work for managing one or more maintenance projects.
IBM created a report on best practices for software maintenance for operating data warehouses. The importance of a study like this is with the increase in Cloud computing. Cloud related products would have to increase the size or quantity of data warehouses as a client moves to use contractors to store their data and applications (IBM, 2005). If you are such a contractor, this is a good resource to help develop a strategy. This can also be helpful for other application types that conduct maintenance with an impact on several applications or services.
References
ITIL. (2012). What is ITIL? Retrieved from: http://www.itil-officialsite.com/AboutITIL/WhatisITIL.asp.
Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute. (2012). CMMI Overview. Retrieved from: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/.
International Organization for Standardization. (2011). ISO/IEC 14764:2006. Retrieved from: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39064.
IBM. (2005). Data Warehouse Software Maintenance Strategy. Retrieved from: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/data/pubs/papers/dw-maint-strategy.pdf.
