Software maintenance from a service perspective

SUMMARY In this paper we investigate the differences between software maintenance and software development from a service point of view, and the consequences thereof for the maturity of software maintenance organizations. We argue that software maintenance can be seen as providing a service, whereas software development is concerned with the development of products. Differences between products and services affect the way in which customers assess their respective quality. Consequently, customers will judge the quality of software maintenance differently from that of software development. This in turn implies a need for different processes than those used by the average software development organization. We discuss two overall approaches to achieve a high-quality IT service organization which include these service-specific processes: ITIL and the IT Service Capability Maturity Model. ITIL is a set of best practices widely used within the IT service industry. The IT Service CMM is a maturity growth model akin to the Software CMM. © 2000 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.