Software maintenance

Common card · No. 483189

Software maintenance is the modification of software after delivery. Software maintenance is often considered lower skilled and less rewarding than new development. As such, it is a common target for outsourcing or offshoring. Usually, the team developing the software is different from those who will be maintaining it. The developers lack an incentive to write the code to be easily maintained. Software is often delivered incomplete and almost always contains some bugs that the maintenance team must fix. Software maintenance often initially includes the development of new functionality, but as the product nears the end of its lifespan, maintenance is reduced to the bare minimum and then cut off entirely before the product is withdrawn. Each maintenance cycle begins with a change request typically originating from an end user. That request is evaluated and if it is decided to implement it, the programmer studies the existing code to understand how it works before implementing the change....

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