Richard Schreiber (the "Software Whisperer") explains ongoing costs and considerations for maintaining software after go-live. He advises expecting minor defects and ensuring the provider is responsive (quick fixes and releases), baking service-level obligations and maintenance contracts into agreements, and requiring a warranty period covering defect fixes. He also warns about rare "edge cases" that may surface weeks or months later.
Chapters
Hi, Richard Schreiber, the Software Whisperer. And today we're going to talk about a question that sometimes goes overlooked, and that is how much is it going to cost to maintain the software once we go live with it? And what should we look for post go live? Well, you're probably going to find a few little minor defects. Hopefully they're minor ones that you missed during your user acceptance testing or maybe your beta test. Once you go live and you want to make sure that your software provider.
Is Johnny on the spot and really.
Efficiently working to correct these defects and getting a new release out to production as quickly as possible, as well as.
If there's any features that you deferred.
From the initial, go live to get those into production as well. And how do you ensure that your software provider is still very active engaged.
Once you go live?
Well, you bake that into your contract.
To make sure that their service level agreements are in place. It's sort of like a construction project where once you go into the new space, there's usually a punch list left over that you hold the contractor accountable for. Well, it's kind of the same thing with software. And you want to continue that engagement.
With your software provider in an ongoing.
Basis, usually in the form of a maintenance contract. Now, the software itself should have a warranty period as well. A warranty period basically tells you that the provider will warranty it against any kind of defects and fix it at their cost, not your cost. And that warranty period can vary depending on the nature and size of the project, as well as your agreement. And then there are these things finally called edge cases. These are things that may take a while to come to light, weeks, sometimes even months afterwards that can cause real problems.
They're called edge cases because they don't happen very often.
It takes a bunch of unusual circumstances for it to come to light, but boy, it can rear its ugly head. So that's why you need to have that software maintenance contract again. Richard Shriver, the Software Whisperer Keep asking those questions.
