Productivity of software development work is usually measured by dividing size of the delivered new software by the project total effort. The unit is function points per person month, FP/mmonth. Measuring productivity of software maintenance and support (M&S) is slightly different, because the nature of maintenance work is continuous instead of temporary, the size of the software changes over time, and there is no “total effort”. However, for comparability and benchmarking reasons we need some standards for measurement. Most commonly used M&S productivity metrics are annual maintenance effort and size of the software. The size may be measured either in the middle or in the end of the year. In addition to basic metrics, it is important to collect information about the M&S circumstances and the factors that may have impact in productivity

Software maintenance and support should be reliable, secure, instant, productive, invisible, safe, etc. Productivity may not be the most important characteristic for software maintenance and support, but from the customer (the owner of the software) perspective good productivity is well appreciated. In opposite, if the customer feels paying too much for the maintenance, the customer satisfaction, which is necessary for the maintenance service provider, collapses. In most of the cases measurement of the M&S productivity helps both parties: the customer to KNOW the real productivity instead of feeling it, and the service provider to understand the factors that influence on productivity and to improve if necessary.

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