The challenges of transferring software maintenance services

There are cases when a business application meets the needs of the business, and it will be adequate in the coming period, but the current maintenance service providers are no longer able to maintain it. If the technology is outdated, a decision is likely to be made to rewrite the application to a newer technology. If this is not the case, the possibility of contracting the maintenance of the application by a new service provider should be considered. The paper deals with the preparation and transition of maintenance to a new service provider, pointing out the activities necessary to ensure the quality of maintenance services.Questions that the organization needs to answer before deciding whether to transfer maintenance service to a new service provider:1. Is there an appropriate vertical solution on the market?2. Can the application support business changes planned for the next period?3. How complex are expected application changes?If the continued use of the application is justified, some information about application and the scope of the service should be collected:1. Collecting information about the applicationa. Which business area and which application processes it supports. Are there process descriptions and user instructions, how up to date.b. Whether there is documentation to administer the application.c. Technologies used, versionsd. Is there a data model. Is there an image of the system architecture, with identified integration points to other applications. If it does not exist, it should be created.e. Is the source code available for all components, and is up-to-datef. Is the source code made based on development standards.2. Collecting information about service scope:a. How many errors, over which functionalities the mostb. How many hours of customer support c. How many requests for modifications, and the total number of m/d. Note: It is expected that the potential supplier will request the above information, by competencies, in order to be able to estimate the expected scope of work.3. Estimation of effort in the coming perioda. Make a projection of bugs and customer supportb. List the expected change requests and integrations Selection of new service provider: experience in providing similar services, competencies and experience of team members, team organization and operating model, min 3years TCO.Transition process:• Prepare a workshop plan and define the project team:• Functional workshops:o Key users use the app to demonstrate business processes. They list problems, missing functionalities and no longer needed functionalities (those functionalities can be excluded from the scope)• Technical workshops• Cut-over planningThe presentation will be supported by the experience gained in several cases of taking over business solutions maintenance.