Abstract
AbstractStudies show that the maintenance stage of the software life cycle consumes a large proportion of software development resources. They also show that the maintenance cost of a software product increases with age and that it costs less to maintain the redeveloped software product. Thus, it may be worthwhile to redevelop software to reduce the maintenance costs but the redevelopment costs may prohibit this. This paper discusses the nature and behaviour of software maintenance costs and software development costs. In order to minimize the sum of maintenance and development costs for a software product, it recommends and illustrates the use of replacement theory. The replacement model suggested in this paper will be useful for choosing between redeveloping the software and maintaining the existing software. This paper provides a worked example consistent with replacement theory. Since capital is in short supply, replacement projects have to vie with new software and maintenance projects for funding. This paper also describes building a software project portfolio of new software development, software maintenance, and software redevelopment projects.
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