Abstract
Outsourcing of software life cycle activities is a growing business area in many sectors influenced by Information Technologies. This fact, coupled with the usual lack of planning and high costs of software maintenance, may invite many organizations to outsource this important process of the software life cycle. Such outsourcing should be relied to a “technological associate” who can carry out this process using an adequate methodological foundation. In this paper we present the outsourcing strategy that we have integrated in MANTEMA, a methodology for software maintenance developed by our university and Atos ODS, a multinational organization which provides software maintenance services to third-party organizations.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
A.J. Albretch, Measuring application development productivity, in: Proceedings of the IBM Application Development Symposium, Monterrey, Canada (1977) pp. 83-92.
V. Basili, L. Briand, S. Condon, Y. Kim, W. Melo and J.D. Valett, Understanding and predicting the process of software maintenance releases, in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1996) pp. 464-474.
L.C. Briand, K. El Emam and F. Bomarius, COBRA: a hybrid method for software cost estimation, benchmarking and risk assessment, in: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering (IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1998) pp. 390-399.
J.M. Brower, Outsourcing and privatizing information technology, Crosstalk, The Journal of Defense Software Engineering (1997) 28-30.
F. Calzolari, P. Tonella and G. Antoniol, Modelling maintenance effort by means of dynamic systems, in: Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, Amsterdam (The Netherlands) (IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1998) pp. 150-156.
D.N. Card and R.L. Glass, Measuring Software Design Quality (Englewood Cliffs, 1990).
L. De Looff, Information Systems Outsourcing Decision Making: A Managerial Approach (Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA, 1990).
M. De Vogel, Outsourcing and metrics, in: Proceedings of the 2nd European Measurement Conference, FESMA'99 (Federation of European Software Metrics Association/Technologisch Instituut, 1999) pp. 217-225.
M.J. Earl, Management Strategies for Information Technology (Prentice-Hall, London, UK, 1989).
Euromethod Project, Euromethod version 1 (1996).
I. Graham, B. Henderson-Sellers and H. Younessi, The OPEN Process Specification (ACM Press and Addison-Wesley, Essex, UK, 1997).
T. Hoffman, Users say move quickly when outsourcing your personnel, Computer World (March 1997) 77.
IEEE Std. 1219-1992, IEEE Standard for Software Maintenance (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. New York, USA, 1992).
ISO/IEC 12207 - International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission, Information Technology. Software Life Cycle Processes, Canada (1995).
D.W. Karolak, Software Engineering RiskManagement (IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1996).
R. Klepper and W.O. Jones, Outsourcing Information Technology, Systems and Services (Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1998).
H.-J. Kung and Ch. Hsu, Software maintenance life cycle model, in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance (IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1998) pp. 113-121.
A.C. Neitzel, Managing risk management, Crosstalk, The Journal of Defense Software Engineering (July 1999) 17-21.
F. Niessink and H. van Vliet, Predicting maintenance effort with function points, in: Proc. of the International Conference on Software Maintenance (IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1997) pp. 32-39.
F. Niessink and H. van Vliet, The IT service capability maturity model, Technical Report IR-463, Release L2-1.0. Available on-line (2000-10-31), http://www.cs.vu.nl/?frankn/publications/TR99.Niessink.pdf (1999).
M. Paulk, C. Weber and B. Curtis, The Capability Maturity Model: Guidelines for Improving the Software Process (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1995).
T.M. Pigoski, Practical Software Maintenance. Best Practices for Managing Your Investment (Wiley, USA, 1997).
M. Polo, M. Piattini, F. Ruiz and C. Calero, MANTEMA: A complete rigorous methodology for supporting maintenance based on the ISO/IEC 12207 Standard, in: Proc. of the 3rd European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, eds. Nesi and Verhoef (IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1999) pp. 178-181.
M. Polo, M. Piattini, F. Ruiz and C. Calero, Using the ISO/IEC 12207 tailoring process for defining a maintenance methodology, in: Proc. of the 1st IEEE Conference on Standardisation and Innovation in Information Technology, Aachen, Germany, eds. Jakobs and Williams (IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1999) pp. 205-210.
M. Polo, M. Piattini, F. Ruiz and C. Calero, Roles in the maintenance process, Software Engineering Notes 24(4) (1999) 84-86.
M. Polo, M. Piattini and F. Ruiz, Managing the Maintenance Process, World Class IT Service Management Guide, ed. Jan van Bon (ten Hagem & Stam Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2000).
M. Polo, M. Piattini and F. Ruiz, Improving the quality of the maintenance process, in: Proc. of the 2nd World Congress on Software Quality, Tokyo, Japan (2000) pp. 325-330.
R.S. Pressman, Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach (McGraw-Hill, 1993).
Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (ProjectManagement Institute, 1996).
H.R. Rao, K. Nam and A. Chaudhury, Information systems outsourcing, Communications of the ACM 39(7) (1996) 27-28.
F. Ruiz, M. Piattini, M. Polo and C. Calero, Audit of software maintenance process, in: Auditing Information Systems, ed. Piattini (Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA, 2000).
N.F. Schneidewind, Measuring and evaluating maintenance process using reliability, risk and test metrics, in: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Software Maintenance (IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1997) pp. 232-239.
N.F. Schneidewind, How to evaluate legacy systems maintenance, IEEE Software (July/August 1998) 34-42.
M. Shepper, C. Schofield and B. Kitchenham, Effort estimation using analogy, in: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Maintenance (IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1996) pp. 170-178.
S.A. Sherer, Using risk analysis to manage software maintenance, Journal on Software Maintenance: Research and Practice 9 (1997) 345-364.
J. Van Bon, Sourcing, in: World Class IT Service Management Guide, ed. Jan van Bon (ten Hagem & Stam Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2000).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Polo, M., Piattini, M. & Ruiz, F. Integrating Outsourcing in the Maintenance Process. Information Technology and Management 3, 247–269 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015550329456
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015550329456