Types of software maintenance

There are four types of software maintenance:

• Corrective Software Maintenance
  
• Adaptive Software Maintenance
  
• Perfective Software Maintenance
  
• Preventive Software Maintenance

Corrective Software Maintenance

Corrective software maintenance addresses the errors and faults within software applications that could impact various parts of your software, including the design, logic, and code. These corrections usually come from bug reports that were created by users but corrective software maintenance can also help to spot them before your users do.

Adaptive Software Maintenance

Adaptive software maintenance becomes important when the environment of your software changes. This can be brought on by changes to the operating system, hardware, software dependencies, cloud storage, or even changes within the operating system. Sometimes, adaptive software maintenance reflects organizational policies or rules as well.

Perfective Software Maintenance

Perfective software maintenance focuses on the evolution of requirements and features that exist in your system. As users interact with your applications, they may notice things that you did not or suggest new features that they would like as part of the software, which could become future projects or enhancements. Perfective software maintenance takes over some of the work, both adding features that can enhance user experience and removing features that are not effective and functional. This can include features that are not used or those that do not help users to meet their end goals.

Preventive Software Maintenance

Preventive software maintenance helps to make changes and adaptations to software so that it can work for a longer period of time. The focus of the type of maintenance is to prevent the deterioration of your software as it continues to adapt and change. These services can include optimizing code and updating documentation as needed. Preventive software maintenance helps to reduce the risk associated with operating software for a long time, helping it to become more stable, understandable, and maintainable.

For all businesses and organizations, software maintenance is an essential part of the software development lifecycle. It is absolutely necessary for the success of any software and any evolution into the future. It is important to know that maintenance needs to go much further than fixing issues or bugs – that is only one step  of the software maintenance process.