Learning Software Maintenance Organizations

Developing and maintaining software systems is a knowledge intensive task. One needs knowledge of the application domain of the software, the problem the system solves, the requirements for this problem, the architecture of the system and how the different parts fit together, how the system interacts with its environment, etc. More often than not, this knowledge is not documented and lives only in the head of the software engineers. It is, therefore, volatile and an organization may repeatedly pay professionals to rediscover a knowledge it previously acquired and lost. In recognition of this fact, knowledge management techniques such as Postmortem Analysis are being used to help salvage this knowledge. Traditionally, Postmortem Analysis has been applied at the end of software development projects with a focus on organizational aspects such as how to improve the execution of a process. In this paper, we present the application of Postmortem Analysis in a new context: for software maintenance projects. We also apply it, not only for process improvement, but to discover knowledge on the software maintained itself.