Learning to Love Software Maintenance

Ed Yourdon

For decades, we’ve known that maintenance consumes approximately 70% of the typical enterprise software budget; and we also know that maintenance has a reputation for being the most boring, undesirable assignment that a programmer could ever get. Indeed, it’s no surprise that we refer to people in our industry as “software developers,” and only rarely as “software maintainers.” Does this mean we are doomed to tolerate an industry of miserable professionals, doing as little as possible to fulfill the demands of a job they hate? Based on his 45 years of experience in the field (which included a lot of maintenance work!), Ed Yourdon will help CIO’s and senior IT executives (as well as project managers) transform software maintenance into an activity that has the respect, satisfaction, and excitement it deserves. And he’ll offer practical advice for staffing an IT organization so that it can most effectively carry out an enterprise mission that is most likely to devote the majority of its resources to software maintenance.

Ed Yourdon is an internationally-recognized computer consultant, as well as the author of over 500 technical articles and 27 books, including Byte Wars, Managing High-Intensity Internet Projects, Death March, Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer, and Decline and Fall of the American Programmer. His latest book, Outsource: Competing in the Global Productivity Race, discusses both current and future trends in offshore outsourcing, and provides practical strategies for individuals, small businesses, and the nation to cope with this unstoppable tidal wave.

James Ryan is the Director of the CAI Consulting Practice in Wilmington, DE. His expertise is in business and technology transformation, process reengineering, performance management, and customer relationship management. Mr. Ryan has over forty years of experience in the information management industry helping clients redesign more effective businesses that result in the growth of profitable revenue streams as well as lower cost structures. He has worked with a wide variety of clients. He has worked in a variety of industries with a wide variety of clients including distribution, healthcare, manufacturing, development engineering, utilities, finance services and insurance. Prior to his position at CAI, Mr. Ryan had been a senior management consultant with the IBM Consulting Group. During his career with IBM, Mr. Ryan had held a variety of technical marketing, and general management positions. His field assignments have given Mr. Ryan broad experiences in the diverse problems associated with Information systems across a wide range of businesses. His information technology assignments included CIO and general management responsibilities for the operation of a large IBM Information Technology center. He was instrumental in the implementation of redesigned process and metrics that significantly improved the quality and efficiency of the center.

Ian Brown, a senior associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, leads the firm's Quantitative Software Analysis capability. He has 8 years of experience in software measurement and analysis, CMM/CMMI, and goal-question-metric (GQM) implementation. Ian was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG) in 2004 and serves as the Secretary and Director of Communications and Marketing. Ian is a Certified Function Point Specialist (CFPS) and has earned a bachelors degree from Cornell University and a master degree in public policy from Harvard University. He has worked closely with the firm's Earned Value Management (EVM) capability to integrate software measurement concepts with EVM and is currently implementing the approach on a large maintenance and enhancement task at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.