Assessing the capabilities of military software maintenance organizations

The objectives of the assessment of military avionics software maintenance organizations (SMOs) are to determine the current and future software maintenance capabilities at a specific organization, evaluate the software products and processes, review the organizational infrastructure, identify areas of technical, programmatic and cost risk, estimate the costs associated with maintenance, and identify actions which could reasonably be taken to improve business efficiency and software quality. This paper focuses primarily on our process for assessing SMOs and then highlights our findings by identifying a number of issues that are pervasive across military software maintenance organizations. These assessments provide us with practical insight into the world of software maintenance and allow us to provide direction so that SMOs can plan and be prepared for more legacy avionics software in the future.