Software maintenance from a service perspective

In this paper we investigate the differences between software maintenance a nd software development from a service point of view, and the consequences for the maturity of software maintenance organizations. We argue that softw are maintenance can be seen as providing a service, whereas software develo pment is concerned with the development of products. Differences between pr oducts and services affect the way in which customers assess their respecti ve quality. Consequently, customers judge the quality of software maintenan ce differently from how they judge the quality of software development. Thi s in turn implies a need to carry out software maintenance through differen t processes from those used by the average software development organizatio n. We discuss two overall approaches to achieving a high-quality IT service organization which include these service-specific processes: ITIL and the IT service capability maturity model. ITIL is a set of best practices widel y used within the IT service industry. The IT service CMM is a maturity gro wth model akin to the software CMM, Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, L td.