Evaluation of the Applicability of CM3: Emergency Problem Management within the Industry

Software has become one of the main villains of many organizational problems, emergencies and crises. Despite this, there is only one process model defining how to manage emergency software problems. It is CM: Emergency Problem Management. In this paper, we evaluate the applicability of the CM3: Emergency Problem Management model within five companies. Our results show that the model correctly manages the real-life emergency and crisis situations that are dependent on malfunctioning software. This evaluation shows that all the five companies have emergency processes that reflect CM model’s architecture, however, to different degrees. Additionally all the five companies have also designated roles that act as focal points of information and decision making during emergencies. Finally, only one company has identified the organizations and systems, which should be affected by the emergency process Keywords-Problem management; operational levels; task force team; software maintenance.