Examining Software Maintenance Processes in Small Organizations: Findings from a Case Study

Software maintenance constitutes a critical function that enables organizations to continually leverage their information technology (IT) capabilities. Despite the growing importance of small organizations, a majority of the software maintenance guidelines are inherently geared toward large organizations. Literature review and case-based empirical studies show that in small organizations software maintenance processes are carried out without following a systemic process. Rather, they rely on ad-hoc and heuristics methods by organizations and individuals. This paper investigates software maintenance practices in a small information systems organization to come up with the nature and categories of heuristics used that successfully guided the software maintenance process. Specifically, this paper documents a set of best practices that small organizations can adopt to facilitate their software maintenance processes in the absence of maintenance-specific guidelines based on preliminary empirical investigation.