Week 10

There are mainly four types of maintenance activities. They are;

· Corrective Maintenance
· Adaptive Maintenance
· Perfective Maintenance
· Preventive Maintenance

Corrective Maintenance.
Corrective maintenance diagnoses and corrects errors in an operational system as well as errors from the previous maintenance changes. Problem analysis and documentation is the main task for corrective maintenance. The terminology using for this method is to scale-down the SDLC for avoiding new problems in the maintenance task by investigation, analysis, design and testing of the new system. Corrective maintenance performed in timely manner with the report from the user. Usually whenever a request from user for maintenance arises in new operational system, the maintenance team arrives at a solution for maintenance after validating, prioritizing, designing, testing and documenting the error report. Emergency system failure is also maintained by this method. In that case the IT department by passes the initial steps and tries to correct the problem immediately. When the system becomes operational level the maintenance team determines the cause of the problem, then they analyzes that and designs a permanent solution. After testing the solution they prepare a full documentation. (Shelly, G, B, Cashman, T, J, Rosenblatt, H, J, 2006, Systems Analysis and Design, 6th ed, Boston.).

CQU can follow this method before implementing new information system. By using this system the problem can be identified and it can be solved before and immediately after implementing new information system.


Adaptive Maintenance.
Adaptive maintenance adds enhancements to an operational system and makes the system easier to use. The features and capabilities of this method are necessary when business environment changes. The procedure of minor adaptive maintenance is similar to routine corrective maintenance. Maintenance team analyses, designs, tests and implements the enhancements after validating the user request. Adaptive maintenance requires more IT department recourses than minor corrective maintenance terminology.Major adaptive maintenance tasks are similar to a small-scale SDLC, as the procedures for both are same. Adaptive maintenance always difficult than SDLC, because the enhancements must work with in the constraints of an existing system. (Shelly, G, B, Cashman, T, J, Rosenblatt, H, J, 2006, Systems Analysis and Design, 6th ed, Boston.)

CQU can also use this approach as any member involved in the process of finding and resolving the academic misconduct cases can suggest something new that may prove very beneficial when the review commettiee analyzes it for use. But its implementation can be expensive or hard to some extent due to the restrictions of existing system.


Perfective Maintenance.
This method involves, changing an operational system to make it more efficient, reliable and maintainable. Users requests for corrective and adaptive maintenances, but the IT department usually initiates perfective maintenance method. This method usually increases system efficiency by limiting the errors .To restore the performance of the system more reliably, this method simplify the complex programs to comply with users.Companies with limited resources consider new system development, corrective and adaptive methods than perfective maintenance. Perfective method is costly because it is using in the middle of the systems operational life and is not needed in new system.Benefits of this method are not valuable if the company decides to discontinue the old system. For adding a new function in to a current system we can use perfective maintenance in adaptive maintenance project. (Shelly, G, B, Cashman, T, J, Rosenblatt, H, J, 2006, Systems Analysis and Design, 6th ed, Boston.)

When CQU’s academic misconduct management system is in use, perfective maintenance may use to optimize the user’s desktop setting. That means to develop an interface that seems as friendly to the user as possible. In doing so, users can manipulate the system more easily and save time. In addition, perfective maintenance can install additional memory to the related computers and compress system files to help the system improve response time and system efficiency.


Preventive Maintenance.
Preventive maintenance is to prevent the cause of problems for future.To avoid problems we should analyze the area where the problems likely to occur.IT department takes the initiative for this method. Preventive maintenance often results with increased user satisfaction, decreased down time, reduced TCO. This method competes with IT resources, as it will not get proper priority. (Shelly, G, B, Cashman, T, J, Rosenblatt, H, J, 2006, Systems Analysis and Design, 6th ed, Boston.)

This maintenance used to avoid problems that may occur in future. Like perfective maintenance, IT department normally initiates preventive maintenance and it often results in increased user satisfaction. Thus, it will be used to AMMS because the CQU should prevent the information report of last semister student’s assignments and it is compares with the current studying students.