An empirical study of software maintenance

Abstract

An empirical study of the management of software maintenance is presented, based on completion of an earlier study. The survey at hand has been conducted by means of live interviews with analysts and software managers, using a translated version of B.P. Lientz and E.B. Swanson's (1978) survey form (slightly adjusted at times to take into account a difference of data processing culture). The authors accumulated a total of 150 completed survey forms, properly distributed on the various sectors of the Tunisian data processing industry. For the sake of comparison or confirmation, the authors mention a similar study that was carried out by one of the authors with some companies in Algeria. This study covers a total of sixty surveys, taken in 1988 and 1989. The final results are presented. The issues discussed are scale of effect issues, organizational issues, productivity technique issues and problem area issues.<>