Software Maintenance

Software Maintenance

The term “software maintenance” is used to describe the software engineering activities that occur following delivery of a software product to the client. The maintenance phase of software life-cycle is the time period in which a software product performs useful work.

Maintenance activity involves making enhancements to software products, adapting products to new environments, and correcting problem.

Software product enhancement may involve providing new functional capabilities, improving user displays and modes of interaction, upgrading external documents and internal documentation, or upgrading the performance characteristics of a system.

Adaptation of application to a new environment may involve moving the software to a different server. Problem correction involves modification and revalidation of software to correct errors.

The maintenance phase focuses on changes that are associated with error correction, software’s environment and enhancements due to changing customer requirements.

The maintenance phase reapplies the definition and development phases, but in the context of existing software one comes across four types of changes during the maintenance phase:



1. Correction - Even with the best quality assurance activities, customer may uncover defects in the application. Corrective maintenance corrects defects in the application.

2. Adaptation - Many times the original environment (e.g., Server, Operating system, Business rules, External product characteristics) of application may change. Adaptive maintenance modifies the application to allow changes in external environment.

3. Enhancement - As application is used, the customer/user may desire more functions that will be beneficial. Perfective maintenance extends any software beyond its original functional requirements.

4. Prevention¬ - Computer software deteriorates due to change, and so preventive maintenance, called software reengineering, conducted to enable the software to serve the needs of its end users. Basically, preventive maintenance makes changes to computer programs so that they can be more easily corrected, adaptive, and enhanced.


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