Engineering Systems Integration

Appendix 2: Product Upgrades Based on Minimum Expected Quality Loss

Introduction (Langford 2009)

Maintenance and sustainment costs are typically one-third of the development costs, as was briefed to the Government Accountability Office (Chaplain 2008) for the Space Shuttle, to 70% of the lifecycle costs for the general category of software (Boehm and Basili 2001). Often, managers responsible for maintenance and sustainment target costs reductions of the order of 15–20% to improve product profitability. Perhaps such actions assume that customers are pleased by both the gesture to reduce costs and the company’s interests in supporting fielded products. However, for customers, perhaps the most meaningful consideration of continued product ...