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Strong Lifecycle - Maintenance
MU COSC 198 Software Testing
Summer 2000 - Dr. Corliss

This is one chapter of a training manual originally prepared for Strong Funds by Dr. George Corliss. Other chapters:


Step 6. Maintenance

Most of the focus of software engineering is on techniques to reduce maintenance costs. What is MAINTENANCE?

References: Pfleeger, Software Engineering, Chapter 10,
Pressman, Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, Chapter 13

Why is maintenance necessary?
What are the tasks of maintenance?
What are the types of maintenance?
Why is maintenance so hard?
How can maintenance productivity be improved?
What are the milestones?
What tools are available to help you?

Maintenance - Why is maintenance necessary?

"Maintenance" refers to modifications to the software, hardware, or documentation of a system after it is operational.

Maintenance of existing software can account for 50 - 80% of all the effort expended during the total lifecycle.

Software maintenance is not like hardware maintenance; WHILE loops do not wear out and semicolons do not fall off the end of PL/I statements. Software systems are built to incorporate change.

Exercise: What changes are likely to occur in one of your projects after installation?

Maintenance - Four Types

  1. Corrective maintenance: (20%)

      Diagnosis and correction of errors
      Testing will not uncover all errors
      Emergency vs long-term fixes
      Examples?

  2. Adaptive maintenance: (25%)

      Changes required by changes in other parts
      Interface with changing environment
      Do not correct errors, but adapt to other changes
      Hardware, software, or operational changes
      Examples?

  3. Perfective maintenance: (50%)

      New capabilities
      Modifications to existing functions
      Improve performance
      Enlarge capacity
      General enhancements
      Results from changes to problem or requirements
      Measure of success
      Documentation
      Examples?

  4. Preventative maintenance: (5%)

      Improve maintainability or reliability
      Better basis for future enhancements
      Examples?

Maintenance - Types of Systems

Describe a system in terms of its relationship to its environment. The real world contains uncertainties and concepts we do not understand completely. The more dependent a system is on the real world for its requirements, the more likely it is to change.

S-systems

Formally defined by and derivable from a specification
Concern is not with correctness of solution, but with correctness of the implementation
Problem does not change
Changes in real world may require solution of a new problem
Examples: math problems - matrix algebra, integration
Maintenance:

P-systems

Theoretical solution exists
Real world situation is stable
Implementation is impractical
Implement an approximation to the theoretical solution, or a solution to an approximation to the problem
Solution is based on a practical abstraction of the problem
Requirements are based on an approximation
Solution is acceptable if the results make sense in the real world
Examples: chess program
Maintenance:

E-systems

Incorporates the changing nature of the real world
Embedded in the world and changes as the world does
Problem addressed cannot be completely specified
Characterized by almost constant enhancements
Good candidate for rapid prototyping
Examples: economic model
--- Both parameters and the model itself change
Maintenance:

Exercise: Choose one of your current projects. Which type of system is it? Why?

Maintenance - Impact of Changes

When changes are made, what documents are affected?

Stage of Development Effect of Changes
Requirements Analysis Specifications
System Design Conceptual Design Specification
Technical Design Specification
Program Design Program Design Specification
Program Implementation Program Code
Program Documentation
Unit Testing Test Plans
Test Scripts
System Testing Test Plans
Test Scripts
System Installation User Documentation
Training Aids
Operator Documentation
System Guide
Programmer Guide
Training Classes

Maintenance - What are the tasks?

Development focuses on producing code which implements the requirements and which works correctly. Development involves looking back to earlier stages to review current products.

Maintenance looks

Maintenance encompasses more than development.

There is more to keep track of.

A wider variety of skills are required.

Maintenance is more difficult than development.

That fact is rarely recognized.

Maintenance - Responsibilities of the team

Understand the problem as expressed in the user's language

Generate a request for modification

Understand the system

Locate information in the system documentation

Keep the system documentation up to date

Extend existing functions to accommodate new or changing requirements

Add new functions

Find the source of errors in the system

Correct errors in the system

Answer questions about the way the system works

Restructure the design and code

Delete obsolete design and code modules

Manage the changes

Maintenance - Record keeping

Attempt to learn from our experiences

Simple maintenance log:

User generated maintenance request form:

Internally generated software change report:

Maintenance - Situation Review

Look back at how we did

Rarely done

How else can we learn?

Some questions:

Given the current situation, what aspects of analysis, design, code, test, or documentation could have been done differently?

What maintenance resources should have been available and were not?

What were the major (and minor) stumbling blocks for this effort?

Is preventive maintenance indicated by the types of request being reported?

How will we address these issues next time?

Maintenance - Evaluation of Performance

How well are we doing? Here are some quantitative measures:

Average number of processing failures per program run

Total number of person-hours spent in each maintenance category

Average number of program changes made per program, per language, per maintenance type

Average number of person hours spent per source statement added or deleted

Average person hours spent per language

Average turn-around time for a request

Percentage of maintenance requests by type

Exercise: What use might be made of each of these measures?

Maintenance - Time Spent

How do we spend our maintenance time?

Enhancements &
Maintenance Task
Modifications Corrections
Define and understand change 18% 25%
Review documentation 6 4
Trace logic 23 33
Implement change 19 15
Test change 28 20
Update documentation 6 3

Why is maintenance so hard?

Balance the need for change with the need for keeping a system accessible to users

Limited understanding

Maintenance - Management Priorities

Management priorities often override technical ones

  • More interested in ability to carry on business as usual (maintenance and enhancements)
  • than in investigating new alternatives (new development)

    Pressure from management to repair the old system vs pressure from users for new features or new system

    My experience is the opposite:

    Exercise: What are the relative priorities for your client?

    Maintenance - Technical Problems

    When documentation and code is not clear, it is often hard to tell whether the design can handle proposed changes.

    Design may be flawed or inflexible

    Machine access

    Unreliable hardware, software, or data

    Maintenance side effects:

    Maintenance - Side Effects

    Coding side effects

    Exercise: What is your favorite war story about coding side effects?

    Maintenance - Side Effects

    Data side effects

    Exercise: What is your favorite war story about data side effects?

    Maintenance - Side Effects

    Documentation side effects

    Exercise: What is your favorite war story about documentation side effects?

    Maintenance - Problems of Morale

    Often second-class status of maintenance team

    TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE

    Maintenance team must be skilled at

    Rotate personnel

    Maintenance - Problems of Compromise

    Balance one set of goals against another

    Principles of software engineering to compete with

    Maintenance team must develop a philosophy about the way in which maintenance will be performed

    Maintenance - Cost

    Factors affecting cost

    Model of maintenance effort M = p + K^{c-d}

    Maintenance - What are the milestones?

    Reference: Strong/Corneliuson Project Life Cycle

    The Maintenance Log continues to track the project after it has been installed in production. Its purposes are

    For each requested change, the Maintenance Log typically contains

    Maintenance - What tools are available to help you?



    [ COSC 198 | Marquette | MARQCAT | MSCS | Corliss | MSCS Jobs ]
    198: [ Entry | Calendar | Site Contents | Sites | Site Search | Members ]
    [ Mail Archive | Assignments | Mid Exam | Final Exam ]
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    Notes for week: [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 ]

    Site is not maintained. Many links are broken.

    Copyright © 2000-2001 Dr. George F. Corliss, Marquette University, Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science -- All rights reserved.
    Last modified January 20, 2000. Send comments to Dr. George Corliss (George.Corliss@Marquette.edu)