Maintaining Processes and Strategies

The importance of software maintenance during the life-cycle of software system cannot be over emphasized. The maintenance tasks were focused on delivering system improvements, fixing software defects and preventing software problems from happening. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) provides guidance for the maintenance of software. The basis for Maintenances Process and its activities comes from the definition of ISO/IEC 12207. It defines the activities and tasks of software maintenance, and provides maintenance planning requirements. This process also includes the migration and retirement of the software. While ISO/IEC 12207 describes the process of what activities and tasks to do to provide guidance to Maintenance Process, ISO/IEC 14764 provides guidance on the management of how to perform the Maintenance Process. There are several models and approaches of how to perform software maintenance process. Organizations should seek to adopt maintenance strategies depending on their business’ need and, of course, capabilities. IT-manager should examine the key elements of their software structure beforehand implementing software maintenance process. This paper aimed to describe ISO/IEC 14764 which defines a clear emphasis on software maintenance process. In this study, I will also examine some of the software maintenance strategies/process that are used by organization and determine if there was improvement in the competitive measures of cost, quality and productivity.