No maintenance required
Why would you pay to fix problems
that your software vendors created?
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Here's your economics lesson for the day. Software maintenance, specifically the efforts
directed at fixing bugs or faulty features, are an expense, and as far as expenses go, a real
bad one: There is no upside to this type of expense.
Now here is the less obvious concept that escapes most software companies - any hours spent
on software maintenance should never be acceptable. There are thousands of better ways to
spend your money and man-hours. In addition to the money you are just tossing away, as the
opportunity cost escalates, talented people move on to more creative pursuits and customers
get disillusioned with your products.
Software maintenance hurts the bottom line in many ways. There are the hours spent by the
developers fixing code that was designed and constructed wrong in the first place, there is
the loss of user confidence in the products, the impact on morale resulting from producing an
inferior product, the lost efforts that could have been used on improving products, and I
could go on. The thing I don't understand is that the vast majority of developers think that
maintenance is just part of the job, it will always be there and there is nothing they can do
about it. And many companies have bought into this same faulty concept.
I'm here to tell you they are wrong. If you are paying software companies to fix problems
they created, or losing critical business hours struggling with bug-ridden systems, then you
need to look for a new type of consulting firm. One that understands the cost of bugs. One
that understands that you need to be able to have confidence in the software products you are
using to gauge your companies performance. That you need to count on your key systems without
failure every day.
At larryroof.com we pride ourselves in developing systems that we label "No Maintenance
Required." Once they are installed, they run as they were designed and you can focus your
efforts on what matters most, improving your company's bottom line.
larryroof.com, software with no maintenance required.
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