Perfective Maintainability
- Perfective Maintainability (a.k.a., Perfectability)
- the type of maintainability
representing the degree of easiness with which perfective maintenance can be performed on a
business enterprise,
system,
application, or
component
- Perfective Maintenance
- Maintenance that improves a quality factor (e.g., improves reliability via refactoring) of a
business enterprise,
system,
application, or
component
without modifying its functionality
As illustrated in the preceding figure, Perfective Maintainability is part of the following inheritance hierarchy:
The typical responsibilities of perfective maintainability are to:
- Model the ease to which a system or component can be perfected with minor enhancements.
- Support the analysis and specification of
perfective maintainability requirements.
- Provide a foundation for evaluating the quality of an architecture.
Perfective maintainability is typically decomposed into the following aggregation hierarchy of subfactors:
Perfective maintainability is typically measured in terms of:
- Mean and maximum:
- Cost per operating hour of perfective maintenance.
- Cost to perform specific perfective maintenance task.
- Effort (person-time) per operating hour due to perfective maintenance.
- Effort (person-time) to perform specific perfective maintenance task.
- Down (turnaround) time due to specific perfective maintenance task.
- The conditions (e.g., the size and structure of the
maintenance organization in terms of staff size, roles and
skills levels, and support equipment)
under which the perfective maintenance is taking place.
Typical mechanisms for improving perfective maintainability include:
The following guidelines have been found to be useful regarding perfective maintainability:
- Perfective maintenance is often achieved via refactoring.
