Software maintenance improvement in small software companies: Reflections on experiences

Software maintenance has been recognized as the most demanding and costly phase in the software life cycle. Software maintenance tasks, although require a more complex set of skills and knowledge, are far less interesting to software engineers than software development tasks. In addition, insight into the scholarly literature revealed that the knowledge basis on software maintenance is significantly less than the knowledge base on software development. Due to the obvious constraints of small software companies, they do not have time, people, and other resources for assessing and improving their software maintenance practice. This paper presents the author’s reflections on experience in assessing and improving software maintenance practice in an indigenous micro software company.