For short term or quick maintenance needs, please see RPG As A Service.

The budget of maintenance operations often follows a structure of fixed baseline costs, when in fact a more variable cost structure may be more appropriate for the majority of the programming budget.  Like any other organization, maintenance departments can become stagnant and benefit from periodic reexamination.  Practices and expenses that have long been in place may no longer return suitable value.  Additionally, programming assignments may not be rationalized to make effective use of lower cost offshore resources for suitable tasks.

Software applications do not, unfortunately, age gracefully, but grow more complex and difficult to maintain – the need for technicians with specialized skills becomes more important.  As a leading software maintenance expert has observed, ‘the act of software maintenance itself tends to degrade the software.”*  Another leading software measurement guru reports that trained maintenance specialists can be 2-3 times as productive as programming generalists.**

Software organizations also face staffing challenges as time progresses.  IT organizations tend to become more and more dependent on key personnel with application knowledge.  The tendency is for this dependence to increase as documentation is left incomplete and out of date.

The programmers who remain to support the legacy applications tend to lose interest in their job as it becomes increasingly tedious and repetitive.  Programmer effectiveness stagnates and they no longer deliver the value a changing organization needs.  Their skills and motivation often lag behind those of programmers in more proactive, focused organizations whose core competencies center around software maintenance.

The processes used to maintain the legacy application are usually the remaining modified practices that were implemented years ago when the application was developed.  The processes were never re-engineered to fit the new tasks and responsibilities that belong to maintenance teams.  Often there is no active process improvement program underway.

Despite all this, the owners and the users of the legacy application still get value from it.  And perhaps will continue to do so for years to come.  Can the value and length of service of legacy systems be increased?  Can the software and the supporting team be made more responsive to business needs?  Can costs be made more rational and measurable against business value? The answer to these questions is yes if the right people and processes are in place.  vLegaci can help your organization make that happen.

Arrangements for outsourcing services are structured along a number of dimensions - some are more suitable than others, depending on the circumstances.  Some dimensions to be considered are employee/contractor configurations, management roles, onshore/offshore resources, production support versus enhancement tasking, reporting and methodologies to be used, service level requirements, and so on.  In other words, every situation is unique.  Contact vLegaci now, here , for a free initial consultation.

* Alain April in Software Maintenance Management, 2008

** Capers Jones in Applied Software Measurement, 2008