Maintenance of Department of Defense Mission Critical and Mission Support Software: A Preliminary Characterization
Abstract
The purposes of this study were to undertake an initial characterization of DoD mission critical software maintenance; to identify policy issues; and to outline the scope and major features of potential new or revised policy. We distinguished among three categories of mission related software. Within a category different organizations may use similar processes; across categories they generally do not. For six specific types of software maintenance, we accounted for about 16,000 government and contract personnel equivalents (55% organic and 45% contractor) maintaining 225M lines of code at an annual cost of about $1.26B. About 40 percent of the effort is corrective and 60 percent is a combination of adaptive and incremental improvement. Pure organic maintenance is the exception for any type of software; organic maintenance of embedded software is generally found only on older models of weapon systems; where attempted, competitive contract support proved both more economical and at least as effective as either sole source contract support or organic support. Written policy consists of MIL-STDs (e.g., 2167 and 498) and local operating instructions rather than DoD instructions or Service regulations. There is a lack of consensus over what software maintenance is also depot maintenance.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA334790
Entities
People
- Donald W. Hutcheson
- Elizabeth K. Bailey
- Emanuel R. Baker
- James A. Forbes
Organizations
- LMI