Best Practices in Software Maintenance Projects

Abstract

Maintenance of software projects is an important phase in software engineering. However, there are many challenges associated during this maintenance phase, including technical and managerial. In order to reduce the cost of maintaining software project, many such projects are being outsourced to low cost development countries like India, Philippines, Russia or China. This paper talks about decision parameters for outsourcing maintenance projects. However, outsourced maintenance projects have their own issues and challenges such as poor domain knowledge, lack of understanding of application & technological knowledge and managerial issues such as lack of motivation, attrition. To find solution to these issues, the research conducted study in CMM level 5 organizations and based on case studies, developed an approach for addressing these issues and challenges successfully. The best practices so identified (such as training the trainer, process oriented systematic approach, developing a test strategy and involving end users during execution) can be adopted in other organizations as well. It was observed that the best practices improved productivity while reducing defects in the deliverables.