Individual: Systems Maintenance

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Individual: Systems Maintenance

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CMGT/555 Systems Analysis & Development
October 17, 2016
Professor Joseph Duer

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Introduction: Bad design and Development

Data shows that maintenance activities require a large portion of a systems budget with
some organization spending close to 90% of an IT departments budget on these activities. Most
of the maintenance budget goes towards keeping the system operational or adding capacity. With
these extreme maintenance costs, organizations are left with a small amount of funds to put
towards new projects which, once completed, require more funds for maintenance. When
companies spend too much money on maintenance activities, their profits become reduced thus
lowering their available resources and their ability to compete the reality is that every dollar
counts. Blind Dog Productions (BDp) wishes to avoid these high maintenance costs with its new
video game information system (VGIS) School Simulator (sSim) by using smart
development methods to reduce costs, instead of diving head first into a concrete pool filled with
disappointment (Zetlin, 2013). BDp has the advantage of being new, thus, it is unchained from
limitations plaguing other companies such as legacy integration, yet it must be certain that the
system it is developing has high maintainability to reduce costs (Valacich, 2012).
Maintenance Activities
In order to reduce maintenance costs, BDp has reviewed the different types of
maintenance activities and corresponding effort associated with each activity. Corrective
maintenance (about 70% effort) repair of design and programming errors seems to require the
most effort. These are errors that become apparent when a system is first installed, and are
urgent! Adaptive maintenance (about 10% effort) modifying system to environmental change
is sometimes unpredictable and is completely necessary in order for organizations to keep up
with business requirements. Perfective maintenance (about 15% effort) addition of
functionalities to improve performance is desired; however, it is not necessarily a requirement.

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There are, however, situations where perfective maintenance is necessary in order to reach a
competitive edge outlined by a business requirement. Preventative maintenance safeguard from
future issues (about 5% effort) is required to prevent issues that can arise due to limited
resources or functionalities that currently work as intended. All these types, with the exception of
corrective, can lead to an increase of corrective maintenance effort if not designed and
implemented correctly (Valacich, 2012). Using a systematic approach to developing a system
allows for easier identification and documentation of these problems during development and
could reduce these costs since the cost of fixing problems before a systems implementation are
far cheaper (Soni, n.d.).
Associated Costs
Factors that affect the cost of maintenance must be identified in order to reduce
associated costs. Latent defects are unknown errors that account for most of the maintenance
costs of a system; the number of users, and documentation also affect the required maintenance
costs. The experience of maintenance personal, automation tools, and well-structured programs
also factor into maintenance costs to a lesser extent.
SDLC slashes Maintenance Costs
By using systems development methodology, BDp hopes to address maintenance issues
before they become too costly. The preliminary phase allowed BDp to investigate, among other
thing, the costs and requirements associated with developing sSim. This prevented BDp from
starting a project that would exceed budget limitation. Some projects seemed cheap to produce at
first, but proved unrealistic when maintenance costs were considered. The analysis phase
allowed BDp to define the exact video game system requirements. Functionalities, and

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requirements were properly documented in order to define the scope of the system which further
allowed BDp to investigate any associated future maintenance costs. The design phase allowed
BDp to describe every game detail using UI layouts, flow diagrams, E-R diagrams, and other
visual representations. By designing the system before actually creating the system, BDp
managed to encapsulate the operations of the system into ordered to-do lists that are
documented. This will prevent any unnecessary maintenance costs and problems associated with
game design flaws since design errors can easily be identified using the visual representations of
the system. The development phase will become easier to manage once the design phase is
completed. The system will be less prone to bugs and errors since the design phase has already
set forth every detail to be developed this part must documented extremely well since errors
may arise. The testing phase will be crucial since problems occurring due to unexpected errors
must be solved. With proper documentation along the SDLC phases, fixing problems should be
easier and cheaper. Every problem that is fixed will also be well documented in order to prevent
any reoccurring errors when the system is ready to be deployed. By following these strict rules of
system development, corrective maintenance costs will be cut dramatically allowing BDp to
focus resources onto other maintenance activities that improve the systems customer base
(Valacich, 2012). If BDp manages to hold-off on releasing sSim for longer than planned, most
major errors should be corrected before actual deployment. Errors that occur during deployment
seem inevitable, but the proper documentation should allow for reduced corrective maintenance
cost and effort since problems should be able to be solved quicker with documentation (Garrido,
n.d.). The use of proper documentation throughout the SDLC phases is the key to producing a
system with high maintainability meaning that any adaptive, perfective, and preventative
maintenance costs will also be lower. Eliminating the number of latent defects will reduce

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corrective maintenance costs, and will effectively reduce an expected 60-80% systems
maintenance budget requirement down to a much more realistic and sustainable portion
(Valacich, 2012).
Last Remarks
The best way to manage a project is to document it throughout its creation. For a small
team like BDp, this is an easier feat to accomplish since all involved parties have much to gain
from the success of the project. This hopefully serves as a lesson to larger companies who trust
employees with detrimental success steps such as documentation, yet offer no incentive to create
extensive documentation which requires extra work. A simple mistake such as this could feasibly
destroy an organization operations due to unmanageable maintenance costs.

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References
Garrido, S. G. (n.d.). CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT. Retrieved from
mantenimientopetroquimica Web Site:
http://www.mantenimientopetroquimica.com/en/correctivemaintenancemanagement.html
Soni, M. (n.d.). Defect Prevention: Reducing Costs and Enhancing Quality. Retrieved from
iSixSigma Website: https://www.isixsigma.com/industries/software-it/defect-preventionreducing-costs-and-enhancing-quality/
Valacich, J. S. (2012). Systems Planning and Selection. In J. S. Valacich, Essentials of Systems
Analysis and Design, 5e (pp. 343-349). New york City: Pearson Education, Inc.
Zetlin, M. (2013, October 21). How to balance maintenance and IT innovation. Retrieved from
Computer World: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2486278/it-management/howto-balance-maintenance-and-it-innovation.html