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The Difference Between Software Development & Software Maintenance

December 22, 2009 Differences: Software Development & Maintenance 7 Comments

What are the differences between software maintenance and software development from a service point of view, and the consequences thereof for the maturity of software maintenance organizations.

It can be argued that software maintenance can be seen as providing a service, whereas software development is concerned with the development of products.

Differences between products and services affect the way in which customers assess their respective quality. Consequently, customers will judge the quality of software maintenance differently from that of software development. This in turn implies a need for different processes than those used by the average software development organization.

We will discuss two overall approaches to achieve a high-quality IT service organization which include these service-specific processes: ITIL and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Continue reading “The Difference Between Software Development & Software Maintenance” »

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IT Support Services Comments

  • Connor: Absolutely agree with alosmt everything you wrote. And about time there was a voice of dissent as I’ve been alone in the wilderness for too long! ITIL v2 was pretty good as a framework but then ...
  • pudin: Spot on. ITIL is a load of old Tripe. ITIL is a fwremaork but it is common sense. We have stopped all ITIL training.Peer to Peer learning and focus groups have delivered better and more measurable ...
  • Woo: Stopping in for a quick hi to Mary and Lesli. Great intirveew! I didn't even know we're supposed to count our WIPs. Guess I need to pull out the ol' file.Kudos to the parents/grandparen...
  • Bob Anderson: Daniel, from a certain point of view you are correct. CMMI- DEV deals primarily with software development best practices, the old CMM Level-5 dealt a great deal with defects. However, as you know the ...
  • Bob Anderson: Gunter, there are many possible SLA components and metrics that can be defined for any application software support. First I would recommend that you read this article which I had published in Compute...

ITIL V3 Application Support Q & A

If you have any question on the blog content or have some specific question on how ITSM & ITIL can dramatically improve performance and reduce the cost of your Application Support service "Ask Bob"
Question :
Hi Bob, Since I have make a control of doubts from our dealers questions, that uses our SW, is possible to see evaluation of our intern SLA. Me question is: I find only three metrics using to compare months to months our evolaution: error programs, legislation, improvem...
Answer :
Gunter, there are many possible SLA components and metrics that can be defined for any application software support. First I would recommend that you read this article which I had published in Computer World on "How to create Meaningful IT Support SLA's"  use this link...
Question :
In your answer to "Question : bugs, known errors and kb articles". You refer to CMMI-DEV and talk about defects and say that CMMI-DEV is for software development and does not deal with operations. So, is that another way of saying that CMMI-DEV ignores operations? Isn't...
Answer :
Daniel, from a certain point of view you are correct. CMMI- DEV deals primarily with software development best practices, the old CMM Level-5 dealt a great deal with defects. However, as you know the folks who developed the original CMM  were not really initially inter...
Question :
Hi Bob, Continuing on the question i posted yesterday. I understand your comment and we have actually done that. It is a reactive approach and we now want to move to a praoctive approach and want to understand if these activities should be managed under the change proce...
Answer :
Amiet, I would put it under the "Incident" process and track dates, number of occurrences, how much lost time, cause (who did it). You will need data for management if the practice has to stop. If you want to be "proactive" in stopping this practice" you must capture bu...
Question :
The chaos in applicaiton support in my company is in part due to the limited resources assigned to aging applications and very little documentation. How do I suggest that we need help?
Answer :
Mark, it is doubtful that you can fix the problem, it is mainly a management issue. The best you can do is to gather statistics on the backlog of enhancements, the number and severity of incidents, and how many technical support calls from users you get and the average...
Question :
If a customer is powering down equipment at his site and it will bring down the services during that time, should this be recorded as a change. You will not have any control over this activity and this activity is managed by the customer himself. These activities may ha...
Answer :
Amit, first of all why is the customer powering down the equipment? This should be brought to the attention of management and a very strong note sent to whoever is doing this.  If they are doing it on their own without any instruction to do so and it affects other user...

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