Ongoing Manteinance for IT Support
The ongoing maintenance of systems (hardware and software) consists of the changes made to remove bugs, improve performance or other characteristics, or to adapt the system to environmental changes.
Classification of maintenance activities is as follows:
- Corrective maintenance, which consists of changes to eliminate a problem (error / defect / bug) in a system
- Proper maintenance, which consists of upgrades to the system to adapt to changes in the operating
- Improved serviceability, which consists of modifications to adapt the system to new user requirements (eg. Improved performance)
- Evolutionary Maintenance, which consists of changes to the system for new features requested by the Customer which may consist of changes to the components already in operation or development "from scratch". These activities, considered as real development, follow the same life cycle of development activities
The approach is based on the following concepts:
- Separate maintenance activities, which may consist of adjustments and changes to the components already developed, and activities relating to new developments, often involving the creation of new processes in a new application framework, possibly with re-use of components of the current system
- Plan for maintenance of new release schedule or routine maintenance, with actions planned ad hoc, rather than perform a series of small operations distributed in time intervals short and tight
- Use a separate process for the management of emergency maintenance
- Gather requests for changes to ensure efficient management of maintenance activities, classifying reports signaling (change request / problem report) in the appropriate categories to facilitate analysis, design and implementation
