New perspectives on software maintenance processes

The policies of the maintenance organization, techniques used, types of changes attempted, times when they are attempted, and nature of the product all shape the maintenance process. The authors suggest that no single fixed maintenance process can meet all these needs, but that all views should be consolidated in a single framework. This is done by using the notions of process programming and process environments to provide a structure within which users can alter tools and processes to support all maintenance needs and approaches in a user-tailorable, dynamically adaptable, and incrementally implementable way. Consideration of the demands and ramifications of process programming leads to the discovery of the importance of process maintenance, dynamic maintenance, process execution history maintenance, and product-related process maintenance. These notions, which broaden and complicate the understanding of maintenance, also suggest a software life-cycle model that unifies development and maintenance