Application Project - Research Paper Example

This includes the conception and the development of the maintenance plan, preparation for purposes of solving problems that occurred during the process of software development and the following up of the management of the product configuration. It is at this stage that the software engineers do collect the necessary information for purposes of developing their maintenance plan (Mishra and Mohanty, 2012). Programmers will find information from the software’s code, database tools such as bug trackers, and various documentations, among which includes the users manual of the software.

For effective development of software, the engineer has to familiarize himself with the code of the software. If he is not familiar with the code of the software, then it is necessary for such a person to seek the assistance of his fellow workers, or the developers of the software. Data base tools will only act as secondary sources of gathering information (Xu and Ramesh, 2007). These tools normally gather and accumulate knowledge from the development teams, during the process of software development.

Documentation about the software is also another source of information because it gives a history of the software, its development process, uses and other relevant information that the maintenance engineer needs. The second stage in the software maintenance process is the process of problem and modification analysis. This process occurs after the maintenance group now takes the responsibility of maintaining the software. At this stage, the programmer makes an analysis on every request concerning the functionality and operations of the software.

He also confirms these requests by checking and investigating the validity of the assertions made (Xu and Ramesh, 2007). It is also at this stage that the maintenance programmer proposes a solution to any problem identified, documents the proposal for purposes of seeking permission for purposes of applying these modification. It is at this stage when the maintenance programmer uses the information gathered at the implementation stage to investigate on the assertions made concerning the software.

The third process is the modification stage. It is at this stage where programmers implement the various solutions to the problems they found in the software. The fourth stage is the acceptance of the modification. This is the stage where a programmer tests the success of his maintenance process (Doyle, Lee and Cho, 2012). This is done by testing the functionality of the software after the modification process by the software maintenance engineers. The fifth stage is the software migration process.

This is not a daily process, and it only occurs in case there is a need of porting the software to another platform without changes to its functionality. And finally, the sixth stage is the retirement of the software. This is not a daily routine in the process of software management, but only occurs in the later days of the software when its maintenance is not cost effective (Doyle, Lee and Cho, 2012). Users of the software will also play an important role in the maintenance process of software.

For instance, one of their duties will be to verify and test the functionality of the software. After verification, the can send their opinion to the management or the maintenance programming engineers, identifying the problems, and offering recommendations