Similar to your home or car, minor issues with web application can morph into much larger messes when not dealt with properly. To help limit this possibility, regular maintenance is crucial.

Is it really that important?

YES! Too often, we’ve experienced situations where clients tend to overlook maintaining a customer web application that they either outsourced for development years ago or the in-house developer that created it has been long gone. In these situations, application maintenance can be easily overlooked, especially when things seem to be performing as expected.

Similar to a burst pipe at 3AM, your software can fail at any time, with the likelihood of a failure increasing as the time since the application was last updated grows. In most cases, issues are typically uncovered during the normal operation of the application. The notifications could be as straightforward as a warning or notice alerting you of an issue, or more commonly, a silent failure that you may not even realized that something went wrong. In the cases of the latter events, the realization that something went wrong is not usually known until a later date when the core event is needed.

What type of maintenance is there with software?

Most issues typically fall under system maintenance, application maintenance, and bugfixes.

System maintenance is typically classified as issues that typically affect the host system that your application resides on or with other software that your application may depend on. Examples of system maintenance include patching for security issues, updating to newer software library versions, or addressing a system failure within the host system.

Application maintenance covers issues that naturally occur within the operation of your application. Some of these issues could be as simple as updating verbiage within a screen element, changing the options available within the application, or even modifying a color scheme. Think of application maintenance tasks as a running collection of changes that you want to make to improve the functionality or user experience. Depending on the changes requested, they may fall outside of the maintenance classification, and more closely align with new feature development–don’t worry though, because that is where we truly excel.

As the name implies, bugfixes are changes that are necessary to correct a bug that is occurring within your application. Similar to how pests can cause issues within your day-to-day life, software bugs can also be infuriating. Software bugs can range from very minor ones that may fall under behavior that just may not be ideal, but are tolerable, to critical issues that seriously affect the operation of your software. No matter where your bug may fall within that range, our team is ready and willing to help.

How do you decrease risk?

We don’t have to tell you that risk management is an extremely important aspect when running a business. Accordingly, this aspect extends to the tools and resources you used to operate your business.

It should come as no surprise that we’ve seen some real disasters once the hood is raised and we begin to look underneath. By relying on our software development experience, we’re able to ensure that any disasters are addressed properly. As we begin evaluating software, each issue we review is assigned a priority. The priority is typically categorized by frequency of occurrence, impact upon failure, and total number of users affected. This prioritization allows us the opportunity to breakout each issue and address them methodically, allowing the issues to be handled efficiently and appropriately.

No matter what issue you may be currently facing, it helps to have a team that is on standby to help get you running properly. We provide a wide range of services and software developmentsoftware development is just one of those. If there is an issue currently plaguing your business, then feel free to contact us today to get the conversation started!