ABSTRACT
Maintenance. The term evokes images of hordes of programmers making routine, single-line changes to code. Reality is far different. In many IT departments, all post-implementation support of a system is termed maintenance. Under that definition, both responding to customers’ questions about functionality and implementing large enhancements would be considered maintenance, along with fixing bugs and making the dreaded one-line coding changes. This apparent expansion of scope is the reason some IT shops have renamed their maintenance organizations “application support.” By changing the name, they have made official what maintenance programmers have known for decades: that the work is multi-faceted. And, as Chapter 17 points out, maintenance is the bulk of the iceberg that constitutes a system’s life.
