Practical Software Maintenance : Best Practices for Managing Your Software Investment

Rating:
Summary: You're in charge of maintaining a large system. Now what?
Review: I bought this book when I was promoted to project leader of a 500 KLOC system which was in its 10th year of maintenance. There was no formal maintenance program in place.

This book gave me the information I needed to get started. It was well written, with many real world examples. I did not have any trouble following it. It starts from the very beginning of the process and builds up. Starting with a description of the three classes of modification request. And ending with suggested modifications for your metrics program due to Object Oriented Technology.

I'd recommend this textbook to anyone who is just starting out in the Software Maintenance field. It has helped me considerably. It would probably be too general for someone already experienced with Software Configuration Management programs and Software Maintainability Metrics.

My only complaint is that it could have used more checklists and a web site.

Rating:
Summary: Not a definitive reference
Review: This book has a lot of valuable insights in the Maintenance process for the software made with the traditional third-generation programming tools and languages. The book gives especially good practical advises for the transition activities. The chapter that deals with the Maintainability disappointed me. It contains just links to another sources of information without mentioning a single rule about how to evaluate the maintainability of software. The part of the book that concerns the Object Oriented software maintenance is also very poor.

The book shares the common problem with the majority of technical books : redundant inflated text.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent resource for process & organizational aspects
Review: What sets this book apart is the fact that is one of the few still in print that addresses software maintenance (the other one of which I am familiar is more focused on maintenance programming as opposed to maintenance as a process and discipline).

The main value is the maintenance-oriented framework that the author provides, which encompasses planning activities, a set of processes and organizational and cost considerations. These are valuable guidelines and will help to clearly define the transition between application delivery and maintenance and support operations within IT. Much of this material is also applicable to product-based organizations that produce commercial software.

I would have liked more information about maintenance metrics that I could have compared to resources I already have, and also would have liked more emphasis on reliability and quality metrics. However, the book is more focused on processes and support, and it shines in those areas. If you are interested in software maintenance from developer's and software engineering viewpoints I recommend "Designing Maintainable Software" by Dennis D. Smith (ISBN 0387987835). For metrics I strongly recommend "Software Metrics: Establishing a Company-wide Program" by Robert B. Grady ISBN 0138218447).