Software engineering - Software life cycle processes - Maintenance

1.1 Overview
This document provides guidance for the maintenance of software, based on the maintenance process and its activities and tasks defined in ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207:2017, 6.4.13. Moreover, this document describes the maintenance process in greater detail and establishes definitions for the various types of maintenance. This includes maintenance for multiple software products with the same maintenance resources. “Maintenance” in this document means software maintenance unless otherwise stated.

The document does not address the operation of software and the operational functions, e.g. backup, recovery, system administration, which are normally performed by those who operate the software.However, it does include the related disposal process defined in ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207:2017, 6.4.14.

This document is written primarily for managers, maintenance organizations, quality managers, usersand acquirers of systems containing software.

Many of the activities and tasks discussed in this document apply equally to maintenance services, as well as to maintained software products. For example, in a COTS intensive system, maintenance services are performed to sustain the product in operations.

While the scope of this document is software maintenance, hardware and hardware costs are important considerations for maintenance.

1.2 Purpose

This document provides guidance on the maintenance process. It identifies how the maintenance process can be invoked during acquisition and operation. This document also emphasizes the following in the maintenance process: the maintainability of software products; the need for maintenance service models; and the need for a maintenance strategy.

1.3 Field of application

This document is intended to provide guidance for the planning for and maintenance of software products or services, whether performed internally or externally to an organization. It is not intended to apply to the operation of the software.

This document is intended to provide guidance for two-party situations and can be equally applied where the two parties are from the same organization. This document is intended to also be used by a single party as self-imposed tasks (ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207).

This document is not intended for software products that are “throw-away” or a “short-term” solution.

This document is intended for self-imposition by organizations that develop off-the-shelf software products to maintain such products. Maintenance is applied to computer programs, code, data, documents, and records. It is intended to apply to software products created during the development of the software product. This can include, for example, the test software, test databases, the software test environment (STE), or the software engineering environment (SEE).

This document is intended for use in all maintenance efforts, regardless of the life cycle model e.g. incremental, waterfall, evolutionary, spiral, agile, continuous iterative development). This document is not restricted by size, complexity, criticality, reliability, or application of the software product.

1.4 Limitations

This document describes the framework of the maintenance process but does not specify the details of how to implement or perform the activities and tasks included in the process.

In this document, there are a number of lists. None of these is presumed to be exhaustive. They are intended as examples.