Extended iterative maintenance life cycle using eXtreme programming

Abstract

Software maintenance is the continuous process of enhancing the operational life of software. The existing approaches to software maintenance, derived from the traditional approaches to development, are unable to resolve the problems of unstructured code, team morale, poor visibility of the project, lack of communication, and lack of proper test suites. Alternatively, extreme programming practices such as test driven development, refactoring, pair programming, continuous integration, small releases, and collective ownership help to resolve the aforesaid problems. In this paper, a process model is proposed for software maintenance using extreme programming practices to resolve maintenance issues in an improved manner. The proposed approach speeds up the maintenance process and produces more maintainable code with less effort for future maintenance and evolution. The proposed model is validated by applying it on several maintenance projects in an academic environment. It has been observed that the approach provides higher quality code. The proposed model based on extreme programming enhances both learning and productivity of the team by improving the morale, courage, and confidence of the team, which supports higher motivation during maintenance.