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Did you launch a software and think your work is over? No, the real task begins post-launch. This is the period where users interact with your software and offer insights on what they like and, more importantly, what they do not like about your software product.
Software maintenance involves all the tasks and activities to keep your technological product up-to-date with changing user demands.
Whether you have a legacy system in place for decades or have just launched a new product, neglecting maintenance has both short—and long-term consequences. For example, software that is not maintained is likely to become outdated with time.
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build, and nobody wants to do maintenance.
- Kurt Vonnegut (Renowned American author & Novelist)”
In this blog, I have detailed the key aspects of software maintenance and support services.
What is software maintenance?
Software maintenance is an ongoing process that involves making modifications and updating the software to keep it relevant to customers’ needs and demands. It is done post-software launch to correct undetected issues, eliminate bugs, and enhance speed & performance, and UX.
Experts consider maintenance to be an integral part of the SDLC (software development life cycle) process. Software maintenance services providers are always on the lookout for making provisions for the changing needs of the customers and to ensure they remain relevant in the business industry.
Why is software maintenance important?
The right maintenance strategies help you ensure the software is up-to-date with best practices, regulatory compliances, and technological trends.
There are various benefits of regular maintenance, and it must be performed for the following:
- Eliminating errors, bugs, and issues
- Updating the software code and hardware to the latest versions
- Enhancing the software UI/UX design
- Extending functional features by integrating APIs, third-party packages, etc.
- Migrate legacy software to new technologies
- Cater to new or changing requirements of users
- Ensuring faster running of the application code
What are the 4 types of software maintenance?
Different type of maintenance process caters to unique sets of issues and resolves them. Based on the specific business requirements, you may require one, a few, or all four types of software maintenance:
- Corrective Software Maintenance
- Preventative Software Maintenance
- Perfective Software Maintenance
- Adaptive Software Maintenance
Let’s study these in detail.
What is corrective software maintenance?
It is the most classic form of maintenance that resolves any existing issues or errors from the software. It is simply focused on finding faults and mistakes and eliminating them from your software. When something goes wrong with the software functionality, or it fails to perform as per expectation, it can be quickly addressed with corrective maintenance.
Software support services vendors can conduct audits to prepare bug reports or tackle any urgent issues you are facing with the software.
The company can also find the issues before they surface to the users with a proactive approach. This helps to build brand values and ensure optimum performance.
What is preventative maintenance software?
Did you build futuristic software? If you are not sure then preventative maintenance is what you need. This type of maintenance services are focussed on equipping the software with future needs and involves changes, upgrades, adaptations, etc. Complex software systems evolves with this type of maintenance services.
Preventative software maintenance may seem to resolve trivial issues at the moment but they help to eliminate minor factors transforming into bigger problems from the software.
This means they help to identify and resolve latent faults and prevent them from turning into effective faults.
What is perfective software maintenance?
Perfective maintenance involves modifying or updating the software product according to the user’s feedback or latest demands. For example, once you release the software to the users, they may see the need for new functional features that will help them accomplish new or existing tasks more seamlessly.
The team performing perfective maintenance can modify and update the software code with third-party APIs or create bespoke features to meet the needs of the target audience.
They can also eliminate features that seem insignificant to the users. This helps to make software relevant according to the market demands. For example, successful eCommerce stores need maintenance plans to integrate new features like chatbots, AI & ML, etc to offer a more immersive shopping experience.
What is adaptive software maintenance?
Adaptive maintenance is geared towards tackling changing regulatory compliances, business policies, and meeting them efficiently. This involves keeping up with changes in the operating system, Cloud storage capabilities, hardware needs, etc.
Any changes in such aspects require the software to adapt to them for optimal performance, hence the name adaptive maintenance.
What is a software maintenance process?
There are various types of processes involved in the software maintenance life cycle. Most of the software support services providers include the following in the process:
Software Audit
This is a comprehensive review report of a company’s software, systems, and licenses for regulatory compliance. In the audit, a software consultant can identify key areas for improvement.
Identifying Issues
The process helps to determine software parts that need to be modified. Issues can be user-generated or suggested by stakeholders or developers.
Analysis
The modification activities are analyzed for possible effects, and cost analysis is also done.
Design
The new changes are adopted for visibility and smooth navigation in the user interfaces.
Implementation
The software maintenance company integrates the modules into the code.
Software Testing
Before making the changes live, the software application is tested for performance. This involves checking the system and the modules separately and also as a whole. The process involves unit testing, functional testing, and more, depending on the key objectives.
Delivery
The company must ensure optimal performance before deploying changes. In the final step, the changes in the software code are made live and available to the users.
Wrapping Up
Software maintenance services help to keep our product and legacy systems up-to-date with security patches technology trends, and smoothly adapt to the changing business requirements.
At Nethues Technologies, a software development company in India, we offer end-to-end maintenance services. We can also help you tackle ongoing projects and maintain existing solutions.
Our base in India allows us to help you save up to 40% of software maintenance costs. Serving diverse business industries for 23+ years, we have delivered 2800+ successful projects worldwide and counting.
You can outsource software development or seek upgrade of your existing solutions.
