Introduction to Software Maintenance Types
Software Maintenance Types are the techniques applied as the last part of the software development process that aids in keeping the functionality and updates to match the customer’s needs, after a round of user acceptance testing or the business acceptance testing processes. The main reason to uphold this step is to track the quality assurance and fault tolerance records for continued progress in terms of the software application’s efficacy and performance. In an explicitly growing technological world, it is vital to make continuous integration and regular updates to the functional needs of the client to successfully own and operate on the software application system.
Types of Software Maintenance
The below are the various types of Software Maintenance categories entailed as the final stage of the application development,
1. Corrective Software Maintenance
The Corrective software maintenance is the naturally chosen way to employ an update activity on a software application system. It is used for identifying and keeping track of all the defects in the application that can possibly create a bigger dent in the application’s performance. This type of maintenance can be applied on every stage of the software development life cycle such as the design phase, the requirement analysis phase, and the code building phase as well. The assessments on the identified corrections are commonly pulled out from defect analysis reports generated by the decision making professionals.
This type of software maintenance technique can support in finding the areas that require the corrections to be implemented in an earlier point of time, as an effort to guard the client’s product ability and their eminence. This process is incorporated to handle the merge of the defect fixes with the existing system, to enable the latest updated software application, after the defect tracking activities are complete. These bugs can be an outcome of wrongful planning, insufficient analysis, improper or erroneous technical coding. The faults, in this case, are known to be the remains of the blunders that keep the software from becoming a perfectly efficient and finely performing product.
2. Adaptive Software Maintenance
The Adaptive software maintenance is one of theimperative practices, where there are chances of a variable environment to place the software application on, for a successful functional flow to get executed. The environment in this case in point can be a hardware or software supporting units, such as the RAM, the system processing memory, storage type, the system platforms, the supporting applications, the plugins, additional library files, etc. Every now and then, this type of maintenance is used to adapt the required directoriallegal obligations like rules, regulations, guidelines, principles, etc. The activities involved in this process can be revising the existing process, adjust the functional flow of the application, increased visibility to the users, technical alterations on the code, etc.
It is the process of mending the modular sections of the software system that gets touched or distressed by the modifications made on the individual units of the system. This process is made up of accustoming theprograms with respect to the alterations in the settings where the software is situated to run on. In most organizations, the software professionals prefer the environment settings to be separately managed for different processes like the development process, the initial testing process, the user acceptance testing, and the life for actual product functioning.
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3. Perfective Software Maintenance
The Perfective software maintenance process is centered on the modifications in the requirements and functionalities of the already established software’s processing. After the development is completed and after the preliminary testing process is completed, the user acceptance testing will be performed in order to validate the product with respect to the user’s visibility, instead of testing the system based on technicality behind building the software. Hence, there is a high possibility for the user in the user acceptance testing process to identify the usability flaws in the software. These flaws can then be termed as the change requests, additional requirements, or the part of the future requirements.These flaws from the user’s point of view can be an alteration in appearance, addition of new attribute, or for removing a functional element that is seen as unnecessary by the user.
This process results in higher visibility on estimating what the user is expected from the product as a whole application. It mostly covers the improvement areas for the user to get comfortable with the application, and to parallel keep working on the efficiency of the software system, both in terms of the functionality and appearance of the system that is built up until the user acceptance testing part.
4. Preventive Software Maintenance
The Preventative Software Maintenance, just as the name says, is used for avoiding any future downfalls with respect to the software performance and scalability of the overall system. The main intent of employing this type of software maintenance process is to check the weak elements in terms of adaptability to new and upcoming changes for the software application. It can typically contain the validation process of code coverage, all the different types of coverage testing, examining storage space utilization during the run time, and the validation of the documentation created & updated for each step in the software development life cycle process.
This facilitates in reducing the number of potentially hazardous behavior from the software functional standpoint, and in maintaining the stability of the application. A few of the routine processes involved in the preventive software maintenance activity are the code evaluation to meet with the organization’s coding standards, keeping in check the run time values of the code execution, competent memory occupancy, estimation of code intricacy, etc.
Conclusion
Software Maintenance types are chosen based on the maintenance scenarios and the areas that needs the maintenance activities to be applied. It is important to see the software maintenance practice, being the closing phase, as one level ahead and above the defect tracking process, which is typically covered in the testing phase of the software development life cycle.
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