Fit for Change: Steps towards Effective Software Maintenance

This report describes experiences the authors made over a period of approximately 15 months in a software development and maintenance project in the banking area. It analyzes how the project team managed the transition from the development to the maintenance phase under rather difficult circumstances. The report starts with a description of the project analyzed and a diagnosis of the challenges the project team was facing during that transition period. Then, the measures taken by the project team are described and evaluated. The report concludes with a best practices section summarizing the experiences made.