Development
It does not end at launch
Dependencies age, interfaces change, vulnerabilities become public. Maintenance keeps that under control.
Area
Development
Typical for
Existing applications
Rhythm
Monthly, quarterly, yearly
What it is about
Software does not wear out, but everything around it changes. A system nobody has touched for three years often cannot even be deployed when it matters.
Maintenance is predictable effort. Deferred maintenance is a project, usually arriving exactly when there is no time for one.
What it covers
- Security updates promptly rather than in batches
- Dependencies kept current in small steps
- Reacting to announced shutdowns of third-party interfaces
- Watching the monitoring and taking its alerts seriously
- Regularly checking that the system can still be built and deployed
Also for code we did not write
We take over applications somebody else built. That starts with an inventory: what runs, what it is built on, and what is urgent.
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