Maintenance decision making in problem and modification analysis phase using a knowledge-based model

Software maintenance is an ongoing process during the lifetime of a software system. Once it is on production the software application must evolve when new anomalies uncovered or when new user requirement arises. Prior to any software evolution, decision making need to be undertaken by the organization's Software Maintenance Decision Maker (SMDM) whether to proceed with the evolution required and how to proceed with the required maintenance. However, the study on decision making in software maintenance is very limited. Existing researches focus mainly on project management, software effort estimation or decision making on software maintenance policy selection. The uniqueness of this study relies on the ability of knowledge management method to capture the software maintenance knowledge of a software application that is inherent in the Software Application Expert Maintainer (SAEM) mind and software application specification and use it to support the software maintenance analysis phase. It is crucial for the knowledge to be available for the SMDM especially in the event that the expert software maintainer is not available. This study is also able to assist Software Application Beginner Maintainer (SABM) to gain maintenance knowledge of a particular software application that is available in the knowledge-based decision making model. This results in shorter time to learn on how to maintain a software application without the SAEM assistance. This paper proposes an alternative to the SAEM and software application specification knowledge through the Maintenance Decision Making Knowledge-Based (MademKB) Model that can preserve the maintenance knowledge of a software application to support software maintenance decision making. The MADEMKB is evaluated using case study with Malaysian organization.