Software Maintenance Capability Maturity Model (SM-CMM): Process Performance Measurement

Software maintenance constitutes an important part of the total cost of the lifecycle of software. Some even argue that this might be the most important component of the cost, even though customers often do not perceive the added value of software maintenance. A proposed approach to highlighting the added value of maintenance is to provide the customer with process performance measures aligned with the key activities performed by the maintenance organization. Such performance measures could then form the basis for a clear agreement on the expectations, and outcomes, of these activities. Process Performance management and measurement requires that processes be chosen based on their impact on the quality and the performance of the software maintenance organization It also requires that measures be identified and established and that a reference point (baseline) and a target be set for each measure. Finally, they require that data be collected in order to develop and use process performance prediction models. In this paper, we introduce best practices, for the first three maturity levels, to help the maintainer organization assess its process performance. These practices constitute a subset of our proposed Software Maintenance Capability Maturity Model (SM-CMM).