Empirical analysis of massive maintenance processes

We present initial results of applying statistical control techniques to the massive maintenance processes of a software organization rated at the CMM level 3. In particular, we present results from an empirical study conducted on a large massive adaptive maintenance project. In a previous study (2001) we analyzed the correlation between the maintenance size and productivity metrics and produced models to estimate the costs of a project conducted according to the adopted maintenance processes. In this paper we analyze data about the single phases of the process and, in particular, the distribution of the effort among the phases and causes of variations.