Software Maintenance

Maintenance

In today's fast paced world, software systems are developed rapidly and are constantly changing. The maintenance phase of the software engineering lifecycle takes the majority of life cycle funds "which involves changes to the software in order to correct defects and deficiencies found during the field usage as well as the addition of new functionality to improve the software's usability and applicability." (Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, www.wikipedia.org, 2005). Therefore it is prudent to possess a software maintenance plan and procedures to contain the cost of software development.

After the software have been developed and deployed to customers, there is a need to have a maintenance process in order Starving Students to stay in business. Software maintenance is one of the most important aspects in the software industry. Customers who purchase the programs will require technical support. Software systems of today are complex, and they need to be fast, as well as accurate. "From simple, everyday software systems that track our bank accounts to the complex systems in airplanes, cars, and military machinery; there is a demand for highly reliable, error-free software." (Techstreet, Software Configuration Management Document Templates, www.techstreet.com, 1999). This maintenance is the sum of all activities required to provide cost-effective support to a software system and would be an ongoing process which would include continuing support of end users, correction of errors, and updates of the software over time. These activities are preformed during the pre-release stage as well as the post-release stage. Pre-release activities include planning for post-release operations and support. Post-release activities include software modification, training, and help desk operations. At this stage, it is critical to pay attention to how effectively and quickly user problems are resolved. Without these end-users the Starving Students would be out of business.

Software maintenance will be performed by the Starving Students. These four individuals are both the software developer and software maintainer. It is important that this maintenance process is identified in writing, which also describes the Starving Students full responsibilities in detail. Since software maintenance activities can involve the use of variety of resources, it is recommended the all individuals in the Starving Students approves the final version of the software maintenance plan.

During the software maintenance process quality assurance would be used to establish if a deliverable is accepted based on the process used to create it. This process would be used to evaluate overall project performance frequently and to determine that quality reviews were held, deliverables tested, and custom acceptance acquired.

Software bugs are always present in any software. "A software bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from working as intended, or produces an incorrect result." (Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, www.wikipedia.org, 2005). All known issues will be addressed. This maintenance process will help fix these bugs or known issues. This process begins with a change request and a preliminary problem analysis. Next, any individuals from the Starving Students would undertake to investigate and determine the cost of alternative solutions. Then, the chosen solution is implemented and tested. Finally, the change is release to the customer as a service pack, security patch, or