Measurements for managing software maintenance

Software maintenance is central to the mission of many organizations. Thus, it is natural for managers to characterize and measure those aspects of products and processes that seem to affect the cost, schedule, quality and functionality of software maintenance delivery. This paper answers basic questions about software maintenance for a single organization and discusses some of the decisions made based on the answers. Attributes of both the software maintenance process and the resulting product were measured to direct management and engineering attention toward improvement areas, track the improvement over time, and help make choices among alternatives