17 maintenance and release management - 1

Setting up and Managing Global Software Maintenance Teams:Maintenance & Release Management

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Objectives of the Tutorial To

Share with you relevant project / quality management practices of running product maintenance projects

See the applicability of common project management aspects to Maintenance

NOT To Give you any “one-size-fits-all” magic

formula Claim universality of the methods discussed

Maintenance and Release management - 1

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Agenda for Maintenance and Release Management Session 1: Context of setting up

Global Maintenance Teams Session 2: Organization Structures

and People Issues in Global Maintenance Teams

Session 3: Typical Process Steps and Resource Estimation


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Session 1:Objectives Understanding the relevance of

maintenance in a distributed environment Getting aware of the differences and

similarities between maintenance and development from project management perspective

Knowing the steps involved in setting up a global product maintenance team

Setting the context for the next two sessions


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Why is Maintenance Important? “Mindtree’s vice-chairman and

president (Europe and Asia-Pacific) says it has enlarged its portfolio of annuity based revenue streams … like maintenance and enhancement and such work contributes to 20-25% of its current revenue”

Harsh Lohit (CEO of Techspan) says the new vision is “to change the customer base by targeting real businesses and tap the maintenance segment”


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Source: Business World, February, 2002

Why is Maintenance Important? Downtimes in software and hardware on

PCs in industry costs upwards of $70 Million

Close to 2.5 Million calls are received by the leading computer makers for assistance

70% of broad band users call their service providers spending an average of $15 per call.


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Source: SupportSoft, January, 2004

Why Is Maintenance Important?

Maintenance is a good cash cow, fairly insulated from market ups and downs (especially when we don’t have a big local market)

Maintenance has to go on irrespective of whether new development happens or not


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Why is Maintenance ImportantIn The Context of Globalization?


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Global CustomersWho Want 24x7 Support

Global Products That Require Specialized Knowledge

Global ResourcesTo Leverage Talent

Global EconomyTo Achieve Cost Effectiveness

Maintenance is Important, Yet… It is the most ignored

Very little forums for sharing information Very few journals devoted for this

It is not the most sought after job function Seen as a “stepping stone” to

“development” Not perceived as technically challenging


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What is a “Project” in Maintenance? Typically organized around a Version or

a Release Each maintenance project consists of

several bug fix transactions In addition, there are other types of

“Scheduled” Maintenance Projects…


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What are the types of Maintenance? Adaptive Maintenance

Porting Moving to new versions of OS, Database… Certification

Preventive Maintenance Database Administration OS Tuning…


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Attribute Development projects Maintenance projects

Duration Relatively longer timeframe Shorter timeframes

Continuity Continuous Discrete / Discontinuous

Incremental Nature

Can build on past work and is usually incremental

Seldom incremental

Ownership Usually greater sense of ownership is easier to achieve

More difficult to achieve the sense of ownership

Predictability Amenable to planning Difficult to plan

Nature of work Can be proactive Usually reactive

Development and Maintenance “projects”: Different animals?

Maintenance Projects:Applicability of PM Processes


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Project Management Processes


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Project Initiation

Project Planning

Project Closure

Project Tracking

–Management Team building

–Scope and high level work allocation

– Mgmt reporting procedures

– Infrastructure group co-ordination

– Team formation

– Planning data from process database

–Success factors

–Risk factors

–Size estimates

–Effort estimates

–Milestones

–Dependencies

–Process tailoring

–Resource allocation

–Scheduling

–Schedule tracking

–Status reporting

–Team meetings

–Conference Calls

–SPMP updates

–Skill data updates

– Actual size/ effort/ schedule spent

–Actual project metrics

–Actual Risks encountered / not encountered

–Actuals Vs Estimates

–Things went right

–Things went wrong

–Lessons learnt

–Update Process Database

© “Managing Global Software Projects” Gopalaswamy Ramesh, Tata McGraw Hill, 2002

Project Initiation and Planning Activities in Maintenance Identifying maintenance requirements

(SLAs) Formulating Work Allocation Strategies Management Team Building Planning for Training, Handholding and

Transition Identifying infrastructure


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Project Execution And Tracking Activities For Maintenance Projects Training Period (on the job) with

Development Setting up of necessary infrastructure Handover and parallel run Independent support Taking more ownership


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Project Closure Activities For Maintenance Projects Analysis of performance Updating of Metrics Redeployment of resources


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How do Global Teams Evolve?


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• One team “Directs” what the other team does• The Second team considered as a “Resource”

“Resource” Model

• Teams Specialize in Different Life Cycle Phases• Work Apportioned by Life Cycle Stage

“Life Cycle” Model

• Teams Work In Close Unison• Through All Life Cycles, as Peers

“Integrated Team” Model

© “Managing Global Software Projects” Gopalaswamy Ramesh, Tata McGraw Hill, 2002

How does this apply to Maintenance?


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• Dependent, Controlled, “sustaining” maintenance

“Resource” Model

• Independent “last version” maintenance“Life Cycle” Model

• Interdependent Current Version Maintenance

“Integrated Team” Model

Issues to be addressed in Global Maintenance Teams

How to set up teams? (Session 2) How to distribute work across teams? (Session 2) What are the processes involved? (Session 3) How to estimate resources? (Session 3) What is the technology infrastructure required?

(Session 4)


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Session 1:Objectives Recap Understanding the relevance of

maintenance in a distributed environment Getting aware of the differences and

similarities between maintenance and development from project management perspective

Knowing the steps involved in setting up a global product maintenance team

Setting the context for rest of the sessions


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