Chapter 14. The Operation and Maintenance Phase

My interest in planning and budgeting the Operation and Maintenance Phase goes way back to 1972, to my first tour of duty in the Washington headquarters of the Department of the Army.

—L.H.P., Introduction

Just what is the Operation and Maintenance Phase? A generation ago, the budget analysts in the Office of the Secretary of Defense had trouble understanding it. Isn’t a software product finished when it reaches full operational capability? Sorry to say, no. A lot of work still remains. Sadly, this work is still poorly understood. “The software maintenance process is poorly characterized in general,” a 1999 Department of Defense study concluded.1

The Unified Process terms this phase Transition in ...

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