Support and Maintenance

Section 0: Module Objectives or Competencies

Section 1: Overview

The maintenance and support phase encompasses training and support/maintenance tasks associated with the new system.

• Users must be trained to use the new system.
• The support/maintenance phase of the system development life cycle includes daily maintenance in the form of testing and verification that the system is working properly.
  • If defects or deficiencies are found, modifications to the system may be required.

Section 2: Training

The analyst will want to ensure that anyone whose work is affected by the new information system is properly trained by the appropriate trainer.

End-user training is the key to the successful adoption of any new system often one of the most neglected aspects of a new IT solution roll-out.

Training software users involves teaching them how to utilize built-in functionality to personalize layouts and menus to each employee’s roles and responsibilities in an organization. Software training makes repetitive tasks quick and easy and organizes information in an orderly manner, for easy access.

Your first objective in providing software training for end-users is minimizing any productivity losses associated with the software transition. This means you have to, as quickly as possible, get them up to the skill level required to do their jobs at least as quickly and accurately as they were doing with the old software (or manual methods). Then in the next phase, you want the software to help users do their jobs more quickly, accurately, and/or securely than before.

Employees belonging to different departments utilize software functionality in different ways to accomplish their tasks.

Effective software training methods are essential for teaching learners to use the software and training them to become self-learners for the new versions of the software.

• In the case of a new system, written documentation alone is rarely enough, since there are so many people to be trained in such a short period of time.
• Analysts have several other options for training users of a new system.
  • Individual training – Users can be taught one by one, which, though expensive, tends to be the most effective way to teach each single individual.
  • Group training – Training a group can be more cost-effective but in a group situation some of the trainees may miss certain critical points. Further, not all trainees have the same learning style.
  • Training the trainers – Analysts can take advantage of ripple effect propagation: one group is instructed and each person in that first group goes on to teach others.
    • However, it is difficult to maintain control of the content and method of the teaching when the original students go on to teach others.
  • Video or slide presentations can be used to enhance or replace personal training.
    • These can be inexpensive means of reaching a large number of people, but lack the motivating effect of personal instruction as well as deprive the student of the opportunity to ask questions.
  • Training strategies are determined by who is being trained and who will train them.

Who to Train

• All people who will have secondary or primary use of the system must be trained.
• This includes everyone from data-entry personnel to those who will use output to make decisions without personally using a computer.
• The amount of training a system requires thus depends on how much someone's job will change because of the new system.
• Users of different skill levels and job interests must be separated.
• It is certain trouble to include novices in the same training sessions as experts, since novices are quickly lost, and experts are rapidly bored with basics – both groups are then lost.

People Who Train Users

• For a large project, many different trainers may be used depending on how many users must be trained and who they are.
• Possible training sources include:
  • Vendors
    • Large vendors of COTS often provide off-site, one- or two-day training on their equipment for free.
    • These sessions include both lecture and hands-on training in a focused environment.
  • Systems Analysts
    • Since systems analysts know the organization's personnel and the system, they can often provide good training.
    • The use of analysts for training purposes depends on their availability, since they also are expected to oversee all of the implementation process.
  • External Paid Trainers
    • External paid trainers are sometimes brought into the organization to help with training.
    • They may have broad experience in teaching people how to use a variety of computers, but they may not give the hands-on training necessary for some users.
    • Additionally, they may not be able to custom-tailor their presentations enough to make them meaningful to users.
  • In-House Trainers
    • Full-time, in-house trainers are usually familiar with personnel and can tailor materials to their needs.
    • One of the drawbacks of in-house trainers is that they may possess expertise in other areas, but not information systems, and they may therefore lack the depth that users need.
  • Other System Users
    • It is also possible to have any of these trainers train a small group of people from each functional area that will be using the new information system.
    • They in turn can then be used to train the remaining users.
    • This approach can work well if the original trainees still have access to materials and trainers as resources when they themselves are providing training. Otherwise, it might degenerate into a trial-and-error situation rather than a structured one.
  • Computer-Based Training
    • A final option, computer-based training (CBT), is an efficient way to train employees.
    • CBT tutorials lead users through a task at their own pace.
    • Tutorials usually start with very basic information, then progress to the more advanced areas.
    • Although computer-based training is quite expensive to develop, it may be cost effective if the organization has a large number of employees to train, if the people are geographically scattered, or if high employee turnover is the norm.

Guidelines for Training

• Training Objectives
  • Who is being trained in large part dictates training objectives.
  • Training objectives for each group must be spelled out clearly.
  • Well-defined objectives are of enormous help in letting trainees know what is expected of them.
  • Additionally, objectives allow evaluation of training when it is complete.
• Training Methods
  • Each user and operator will need slightly different training.
  • To some extent, their jobs determine what they need to know, and their personalities, experience, and background determine how they learn best.
  • Users have different learning styles – some users learn best by seeing, others by hearing, still others by doing.
  • Since it is usually not possible to customize training for an individual, a combination of methods helps to insure that most users are reached through one method or another.
  • Methods for those who learn best by seeing include demonstrations of equipment and exposure to training manuals.
  • Those who learn best by hearing will benefit from lectures about procedures, discussions, and question-and-answer sessions among trainers and trainees.
  • Those who learn best by doing need hands-on experience with new equipment.
• Training Materials
  • In planning for training of users, systems analysts must realize the importance of well-prepared training materials.
  • These include training manuals; training cases, in which users are assigned to work through a case that incorporates most of the commonly encountered interactions with the system; and prototypes and mock-ups of output.

Good site

• Plan your end-user training strategy before software roll-out

Supplemental Slides

• Training Users

Section 3: Support/Maintenance

Support

Support requires providing ongoing problem-solving assistance to information system users.

• Technical support is a range of technical assistance to assist users in making cost effective and correct use of a product.
• Technical support services address specific problems with a product or service.

Maintenance

Maintenance involves the modification of a system to correct faults, to improve performance, or to adapt the system to a changed environment or changed requirements.

• Reducing maintenance costs is a major concern, since software maintenance alone can devour upwards of 50 percent of the total data-processing budget for a business.
• Excessive maintenance costs reflect directly back on the system's designer, since approximately 70 percent of software errors have been attributed to inappropriate software design.
• From a systems perspective, it makes sense that detecting and correcting software design errors early on is less costly than letting errors remain unnoticed until maintenance is necessary.
• Any system will be required to change for a multitude of reasons:
  • Users demand new functions or changes to the old.
  • Governmental bodies such as the Internal Revenue Service require new reports.
  • New computer equipment is periodically developed that will solve problems that were previously unsolvable.
  • There are also user requests that were identified during the earlier phases but were tabled in the interest of bringing the project to completion.
  • Maintenance is performed most often to improve the existing software rather than to respond to a crisis or system failure.
  • Additionally, programs might be recoded to improve on the efficiency of the original program. Over half of all maintenance is comprised of such enhancement work.
  • Maintenance is also done to update software in response to the changing organization. This work is not as substantial as enhancing the software, but it must be done. Emergency and adaptive maintenance comprise less than half of all system maintenance.
  • As users' requirements change, software and documentation should be changed as part of the maintenance work.

Maintenance Types

Hence, there are various types of maintenance:

• Corrective maintenance: changes made to a system to repair flaws in its design, coding, or implementation.
• Adaptive maintenance: changes made to a system to evolve its functionality to changing business needs or technologies.
• Perfective maintenance: changes made to a system to add new features or to improve performance.
• Preventive maintenance: changes made to a system to avoid possible future problems.

Change Management

Software change management is the process of selecting which changes to encourage, which to allow, and which to prevent, according to project criteria such as schedule and cost. The process identifies the changes’ origin, defines critical project decision points, and establishes project roles and responsibilities. (source)

• Part of the systems analyst's job is to ensure that there are adequate channels and procedures in place to permit feedback about, and subsequent response to, maintenance needs.
• Users and operators must be able to communicate problems and suggestions easily to those who will be maintaining the system.
• The systems analyst should set up a classification scheme to allow users to designate the perceived importance of the maintenance being suggested or requested.
  • Classifying requests enables maintenance programmers to understand how users themselves estimate the importance of their request.
  • This viewpoint can then be taken into account along with other factors when scheduling maintenance.
• There must be an orderly way to integrate changes into systems.
  • Once an individual in the organization has requested a modification, either management or a change control committee must decide whether or not the change is to be implemented.
  • If it is to be implemented, the analyst must design the changes to minimize their impact, and must keep a record of each change as it is made so that it can be easily reversed later if necessary.

Factors

Factors that influence system maintainability

• Latent defects
• Number of customers for a given system
• Quality of system documentation
• Maintenance personnel
• Tools
• Well-structured programs

Video: IT Software Development Lifecycle Part 5 - Maintenance Phase

Video: IT Software Development Lifecycle Part 5 - Maintenance Phase

Section 4: Summary

The support and maintenance phase involves the steps below:

• Training
• Support/Maintenance

While maintenance continues throughout the life of the system, this concludes the systems development life cycle.

Supplemental Slides

• System Maintenance