A Trend Towards Lower Software Maintenance Budgets?

Software maintenance is an important part of the software development
activity, but it is also the less discussed. A recent poll seems to
show that the part of maintenance in software development budget is
going down. Why?

Question: what percentage of your software development budget is
devoted to maintenance. Maintenance is defined as process of
correcting, enhancing and optimising deployed software.

25% or less of the budget ...........37%
26% to 50% of the budget ............27%
51% to 75% of the budget ............24%
more than 75% of the budget .........12%

Number of participants: 433

The annual maintenance costs in the US are estimated at over $ 70
billion. According to the different studies produced in the last
century, maintenance should cost between 66% and 90% of the total life
cycle costs. We can see in our survey that the majority of the
participants estimate their maintenance budget below the 50%
threshold. If we accept that these numbers are representative of a
modified situation, many hypothesis can be made to explain it.

Go to http://www.methodsandtools.com/dynp...php?Maintenance
to see these reasons and get more resources on software maintenance.

On Oct 30, 5:24 am, editormt <edi...@methodsandtools.com> wrote:
> Software maintenance is an important part of the software development
> activity, but it is also the less discussed. A recent poll seems to
> show that the part of maintenance in software development budget is
> going down. Why?
>
> Question: what percentage of your software development budget is
> devoted to maintenance. Maintenance is defined as process of
> correcting, enhancing and optimising deployed software.
>
> 25% or less of the budget ...........37%
> 26% to 50% of the budget ............27%
> 51% to 75% of the budget ............24%
> more than 75% of the budget .........12%
>
> Number of participants: 433
>
> The annual maintenance costs in the US are estimated at over $ 70
> billion. According to the different studies produced in the last
> century, maintenance should cost between 66% and 90% of the total life
> cycle costs. We can see in our survey that the majority of the
> participants estimate their maintenance budget below the 50%
> threshold. If we accept that these numbers are representative of a
> modified situation, many hypothesis can be made to explain it.
>
> Go tohttp://www.methodsandtools.com/dynpoll/oldpoll.php?Maintenance
> to see these reasons and get more resources on software maintenance.


Same as maintaining your car... probably some (or most) will disagree
that even OO needs maintenance.

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:05:38 -0700, Rene_Surop
<infodynamics_ph@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Same as maintaining your car... probably some (or most) will disagree
>that even OO needs maintenance.

It appears that maintenance in general is more modular - replace a
component instead of repair it.   Watch an auto mechanic work.

On 30 Oct, 13:24, editormt <edi...@methodsandtools.com> wrote:
> Software maintenance is an important part of the software development
> activity, but it is also the less discussed. A recent poll seems to
> show that the part of maintenance in software development budget is
> going down. Why?
>
> Question: what percentage of your software development budget is
> devoted to maintenance. Maintenance is defined as process of
> correcting, enhancing and optimising deployed software.
>
> 25% or less of the budget ...........37%
> 26% to 50% of the budget ............27%
> 51% to 75% of the budget ............24%
> more than 75% of the budget .........12%
>
> Number of participants: 433
>
> The annual maintenance costs in the US are estimated at over $ 70
> billion. According to the different studies produced in the last
> century, maintenance should cost between 66% and 90% of the total life
> cycle costs. We can see in our survey that the majority of the
> participants estimate their maintenance budget below the 50%
> threshold. If we accept that these numbers are representative of a
> modified situation, many hypothesis can be made to explain it.
>
> Go tohttp://www.methodsandtools.com/dynpoll/oldpoll.php?Maintenance
> to see these reasons and get more resources on software maintenance.

Perhaps the costs have been moved to India and therefore only attract
a $23 billion annual charge (wages in India being lower than the USA).