An approach to measure software maintenance and support as a value added component of today's business

There has been considerable investment by Dofasco in existing manufacturing process software. Also, it has been shown that software must evolve to continue to be useful, and thus enhancement/perfective maintenance work is a common activity in an industrial environment. Since software maintenance can consume as much as 70 % of the lifecycle costs of a software system, there is constant pressure from our internal clients to reduce maintenance costs. This proposal describes an approach of reclassifying maintenance activities to provide a measurement tool for clients and senior management, to see a true picture of efforts spent on "business support", "retain benefits" and to obtain "business benefits".