Management and Organizational Issues

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Management and Organizational Issues
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(No Transcript)
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Overview

• Management Responsibilities
• Enhancing Maintenance Productivity
• Maintenance Teams
• Education and Training
• Organizational Modes

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Management Responsibilities

• Satisfactory Quality, Minimum Delay and Least
  Cost
• Managing maintenance personnel
• Devising means to increase personnel productivity
  (choice of personnel)
• Ensure job satisfaction (motivation)
• -Improving system quality (education and
  training)
• Organization of maintenance tasks
• -Increase productivity
• -Control Maintenance effort and cost
• -Deliver high quality system.

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Enhancing Maintenance Productivity

• Choosing the right people for the right job
• Motivating maintenance personnel
• -Rewards (financial, promotion etc.)
• -Supervision (senior members of staff)
• -Assignment patterns (rotation)
• -Recognition (importance in organization)
• -Career structure (equivalent to development)
• Communications (Keep them involved)

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Enhancing Maintenance Productivity

• Adequate Resources (state-of-the-art resources)
• Domain Knowledge (Maintenance process and its
  cost implications)

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Maintenance Teams

• Constantly changing personnel (Lag Time)
• Types of teams in development
• -Ego less programming team
• -Chief programmer team
• Types of teams in maintenance (Martin and
  McClure)
• -Temporary Team
• -Permanent Team

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Maintenance Teams

• Permanent Team
• -Maintenance Leader
• -Co-leader
• -User-liaison
• -Maintenance administrator
• -Maintenance Programmers
• Note Important to have a mix of experienced and
  junior personnel.

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Education and Training

• Neglected Area
• Objectives
• -Raise level of awareness
• -Recognition by management
• Education and Training Strategies
• -University Education
• -Conferences and workshops
• -Hands-on experience

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Organizational Modes

• Choice between combining development and
  maintenance activities or having a separate
  department
• Factors that affect this decision
• -Size of the organization
• -Maintenance portfolio

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Organizational Modes(Combined development and
maintenance)

• Program Module (Module Ownership)
• -High level of expertise is developed
• -Responsibility evenly distributed
• -Work load may not be evenly distributed
• -Difficult to implement enhancements (unknown
  dependencies)
• -Difficult to enforce coding standards

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Organizational Modes(Combined development and
maintenance)

• Type of Change (Change Ownership)
• Advantages
• -Tendency to adhere to standards set for the
  whole software system
• -Integrity is ensured
• -Changes can be coded and tested independently
• -Code inspection tends to be taken seriously

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Organizational Modes(Combined development and
maintenance)

• Type of Change (Change Ownership)
• Disadvantages
• -Training of new personnel takes more time
• -Individuals do not have long-lasting
  responsibilities
• Work-Type (departmentalization)
• Application-type

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Organizational Modes(Separate Maintenance)

• Need to maintain a large number of portfolios
• Increasing business need of keeping software
  systems operational at all times
• Advantages
• -Clear Accountability
• -Allows development staff to concentrate on
  development
• -Facilitates and motivates acceptance testing
• -High quality end-user service

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Organizational Modes(Separate Maintenance)
Disadvantages -De-motivation (status
difference) -Developers tend to lose system
knowledge -High cost involved in co-ordination
of development and maintenance -Duplication of
communication channels
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Summary

• Control of personnel issues.
• Choose right people, motivating them and
  providing adequate resources
• Tackle problem of low status and general image
  problem
• Good maintenance team as a valuable asset
• Education and training is paramount.