SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT IN MICRO SOFTWARE COMPANIES

Abstract

Software maintenance is one of the main processes in software companies. It is regarded as more complex and costly compared to software development, and therefore should be carefully planned and managed. Micro software companies are companies with up to 10 employees, and they represent a significant driver of economic development in many countries around the world. However, micro companies have specific internal organizations and a business model, but also have significant constraints on human and financial resources. After outlining the basic concepts of software maintenance and the characteristics of small and micro software companies, the paper presents the author’s experience in software maintenance management in a local micro software company in Serbia. Maintenance management was implemented through a project aimed at improving maintenance processes in the company. The main objective was the improvement of maintenance request processing, which resulted in the implementation of a technical solution related to the timeline of maintenance requests. Since the process improvement project fosters organizational learning and knowledge management activities, a knowledge identification and systematization project was implemented as a subproject. Presented experience gained through fieldwork in the company contributed to the overall knowledge base about software engineering practice in micro software companies, which can be beneficial to both researchers from academia and practitioners from industry.