Software maintenance expert base decision support (SoXDeS) framework

Abstract

Software maintenance is an ongoing process during the lifetime of an information system. Once it is on production the information system must evolve due to the operating environment changes, when new anomalies uncovered or when new user requirement arises. Prior to any software evolution, decision-making need to be undertaken by the organization's IT decision makers whether to proceed with the evolution required, if yes on how to proceed with the required maintenance. However, the study on decision making in software maintenance is very limited, existing research focus mainly on project management. The uniqueness of this study relies on the ability of knowledge engineering method to capture the software maintenance knowledge of an information system that is inherent in the software expert's mind, documentation and code. This uses the concept of expert system to record the knowledge of the information system in a knowledge base and inference logic to analyst the recorded knowledge. The analysis is carried out using heuristic and inference logic pre-programmed into the expert-based framework. This is crucial especially to assist IT decision makers in determining whether it is possible to incorporate an additional requirement into a running system within an acceptable timeframe without the presence of a software expert in question. The framework is tested by proof of concept with a real life application of an organization.