A Case Study in Software Maintenance

Abstract

In an effort to find out more about the tools, procedures, and techniques project personnel use in their work, the Computer-Aided Software Engineering(CASE) Environments Project interviewed personnel in eight software maintenance projects within an agency of the U.S/government. These interviews highlighted problems that we believe are typical of many software maintenance organizations (i.e., the need for more effective software maintenance tools, lack of communication between individuals working on similar projects, low status of maintenance personnel, and lack of a design-for-maintenance philosophy during the software development phase). This report highlights the findings of these interviews, provides our analysis of the findings, and makes recommendations directed at the agency for improvement in the areas of tools, people, and process. We believe that what we observed is very typical of the state of the practice in these areas and as such that this report and its recommendations are applicable to other large or small software maintenance projects.... CASE tools, Environments, Computer-aided software, Software maintenance, Engineering environments

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA269923

Entities

People

  • Alan M. Christie
  • Alan W. Brown
  • Susan Dart

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application Software
  • Business Administration
  • Case Studies
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Configuration Management
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Governments
  • Information Exchange
  • Maintenance
  • Maintenance Personnel
  • Management Personnel
  • Software Design
  • Software Development
  • Software Metrics

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Government and Public Administration Law.
  • Software Engineering.