Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
article

Dynamics of software maintenance

Published: 01 September 2004 Publication History

Abstract

As the information technology industry gains maturity, the number of software systems having moved into maintenance is rapidly growing. Often these systems are also potential candidates for outsourcing. However, adequate information regarding size, complexity, reliability, maintainability etc. of these systems is often missing. This makes the task of estimating maintenance efforts for any such system difficult for the organization owning the systems as well as for a software services vendor bidding to outsource maintenance of the system. This is further compounded by human and management factors related to maintenance activities such as management focus, client attitude, engineers' attitude, the need for multi-location support teams etc. These factors make the problem of objectively estimating software maintenance effort almost intractable.We submit that software maintenance is of equal if not more fundamental importance to the software industry, and has not received the attention it deserves, especially in the context of estimation models.This paper describes a holistic approach towards a study of the factors affecting the effort involved in maintenance of existing software systems. It describes how one could build a systems dynamics model to predict the effort involved to maintain a software system, based on qualitative and qualitative inputs.

References

[1]
Zelkowitz, Marvin V., Perspectives in Software Engineering, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) archive, vol. 10, issue 2, June 1978, pp 197--216.
[2]
Abdel-Hamid, Tarek K., Madnick, Stuart E., The dynamics of software project scheduling, Communications of the ACM archive, vol. 26, issue 5, May 1983, pp 340--346.
[3]
Abdel-Hamid, Tarek K., Madnick, Stuart E., Lessons learned from modeling the dynamics of software development, Communications of the ACM archive vol. 32, issue 12, December 1989, pp 1426--1438.
[4]
Abdel-Hamid, Tarek, Madnick, Stuart E., Software Project Dynamics -- an Integrated Approach, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1991.
[5]
Abdel-Hamid, Tarek K., Adapting, Correcting, and Perfecting Software Estimates: A Maintenance Metaphor, IEEE Computer, March 1993, pp 20--29.
[6]
Forrester, Jay W., Industrial Dynamics", The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1961.
[7]
Forrester Jay W., System Dynamics and Lessons of 35 Years, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991.
[8]
Forrester, J. W., Systems Dynamics, Systems Thinking and Soft OR, Systems Dynamics Review, vol 10, no. 4, 1994, pp 245--256.
[9]
Shepperd, Martin, Cartwright, Michelle, Predicting with Sparse Data, Empirical Software Engineering Research Group, School of Design, Engineering & Computing, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Poole, UK, August 2000.
[10]
De Lucia, Andria, Pompella, Eugenio, Stefanucci, Silvio, Effort es-timation for corrective software maintenance, Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Software engineering and knowl-edge engineering, Ischia, Italy, 2002, pp 409--416.
[11]
IEEE Std. 1219: Standard for Software Maintenance, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1993.
[12]
Perry, William E., Managing Systems Maintenance, Q. E. D. Infor-mation Science Inc., 1981.
[13]
Rodrigues, Alexandre G, Williams, Terry, System Dynamics in Software Project Management: towards the development of a for-mal integrated framework, Research Paper No. 1996/5. Strath-clyde Business School, United Kingdom.
[14]
Tajima, D., Matsubana, T., The Computer Software Industry in Japan, IEEE Computer, May 1981, pp 96.
[15]
Pressman, Roger S., Software Engineering A Practitioner's Approach, McGraw-Hill International Edition, 2000.
[16]
Parikh, Girish, Handbook of Software Maintenance, John Wiley & Sons, 1986.
[17]
Vensim 5 Reference Manual, Ventana Systems, Inc., January 25, 2003.
[18]
Vensim 5 Modeling Guide, Ventana Systems, Inc., January 25, 2003
[19]
Vensim, Ventana Simulation Environment, User's Guide Version 5.
[20]
Bennett, K. H., Rajlich, V. T., Software Maintenance and Evolution: a Roadmap, Proceedings of the conference on The future of Software engineering table of contents, Limerick, Ireland, 2000, pp 73--87.
[21]
Lientz, B. P. and Swanson, E. B., Software Maintenance Management, Addison Wesley, Reading MA, 1980
[22]
Swanson, E. Burton, The dimensions of maintenance, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Software engineering, San Francisco, California, United States, 1976, pp 492--497.
[23]
The International Function Point Users' Group (IFPUG), http://www.ifpug.org/
[24]
The United Kingdom Software Metrics Association (UKSMA), MK II Function Point Analysis Counting Practices Manual Version 1.3, http://www.uksma.co.uk/
[25]
COSMICON -The Common Software Measurement International Consortium, COSMIC-FFP Measurement Manual, Version 2.1, http://www.cosmicon.com/
[26]
Paulk, Mark C., Curtis, Bill; Chrissis, Mary Beth, Weber, Charles, Capability Maturity Model for Software, Version 1.1, Software Engineering Institute, CMU/SEI-93-TR-24, DTIC Number ADA263403, February 1993.
[27]
CMMI Product Team, Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), Version 1.1, CMU/SEI-2002-TR-012, March 2002.
[28]
Curtis Bill, Hefley, William E., Miller, Sally A., Software Engineering Institute People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) Version 2.0, CMU/SEI-2001-MM-01, July 2001.
[29]
Boehm, Barry W., Abts, Chris, Wisnor Brown, A., Chulani, Sunita, Clark, Bradford K, Horowitz, Ellis, Madachy, Ray, Reifer, Donald, Steece, Bert, Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II, Prentice Hall PTR, 2000.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)An Enhanced Software Maintenance Approach Based on World-Class Manufacturing Standard2024 IEEE 4th International Maghreb Meeting of the Conference on Sciences and Techniques of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering (MI-STA)10.1109/MI-STA61267.2024.10599652(56-61)Online publication date: 19-May-2024
  • (2024)A Systematic Literature Review on Software Maintenance Offshoring DecisionsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107475172(107475)Online publication date: Aug-2024
  • (2023)Application of system dynamics model for reservoir performance under future climatic scenarios in Gelevard Dam, IranAQUA — Water Infrastructure, Ecosystems and Society10.2166/aqua.2023.19372:7(1115-1129)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes  Volume 29, Issue 5
September 2004
321 pages
ISSN:0163-5948
DOI:10.1145/1022494
Issue’s Table of Contents

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 September 2004
Published in SIGSOFT Volume 29, Issue 5

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. software estimation
  2. software maintenance

Qualifiers

  • Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)12
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 09 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)An Enhanced Software Maintenance Approach Based on World-Class Manufacturing Standard2024 IEEE 4th International Maghreb Meeting of the Conference on Sciences and Techniques of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering (MI-STA)10.1109/MI-STA61267.2024.10599652(56-61)Online publication date: 19-May-2024
  • (2024)A Systematic Literature Review on Software Maintenance Offshoring DecisionsInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107475172(107475)Online publication date: Aug-2024
  • (2023)Application of system dynamics model for reservoir performance under future climatic scenarios in Gelevard Dam, IranAQUA — Water Infrastructure, Ecosystems and Society10.2166/aqua.2023.19372:7(1115-1129)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Matching Skills, Past Collaboration, and Limited Competition: Modeling When Open-Source Projects Attract ContributorsProceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3611643.3616282(42-54)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2023
  • (2023)Application Maintenance Offshoring Using HCI Based Framework and Simple Multi Attribute Rating Technique (SMART)IEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.332094111(107068-107084)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2021)Study of project type and team structure in the Indian software outsourcing industryOPSEARCH10.1007/s12597-021-00546-059:1(324-349)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2021
  • (2020)Evolution of BPMN Models through e-VOL BPMNProceedings of the XIX Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3439961.3439983(1-11)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2020
  • (2018)Continuous Improvement of Systems in Maintenance Using a Proactive Quality Management2018 11th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC)10.1109/QUATIC.2018.00017(47-55)Online publication date: Sep-2018
  • (2017)Analysis of ticket severity: A case study2017 International Conference on Innovative Mechanisms for Industry Applications (ICIMIA)10.1109/ICIMIA.2017.7975568(763-765)Online publication date: Feb-2017
  • (2017)Improving the Teaching of Software Design with Automated Modelling of Syntactic Dependencies2017 IEEE 30th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T)10.1109/CSEET.2017.31(144-151)Online publication date: Nov-2017
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media