Evaluating the Role of Maintenance Environment Activities in Software Handover

Evaluating and managing software maintenance environment is an important prerequisite for enabling system handover and for commencing maintenance. Despite this, there are no process models dealing with the subject. In this paper, we suggest activities required for managing software maintenance environment in the context of software handover and evaluate them in twenty nine organizations. Our results show that the activities are highly relevant and critical for the successful software handover. Their implementation however strongly varies depending on whether maintenance stays with development or whether it is performed by a separate maintainer.