Analyzing Software Maintenance Cost Based on Work Efficiency and Unit Cost
Masateru Tsunoda, Kenichi Matsumoto, Sawako Ohiwa, Tomoki Oshino · 2018
Software maintenance is an important activity on the software lifecycle. In this study, we try to establish a benchmark of software maintenance cost. To establish the benchmark, factors affecting work efficiency and unit cost should be clarified, using a dataset collected from various organizations (cross-company dataset). We used dataset includes 837 data points collected by Economic Research Association from 2006 to 2016, and analyzed factors affecting work efficiency of software maintenance and unit cost of engineers. In the analysis, we defined two types of work efficiency. Also, as unit cost of engineers, we defined two types of unit cost. As attributes related to work efficiency, we analyzed address to process improvement, business sector, and required availability rate. As attributes related to unit cost, we analyzed address to process improvement, business sector, and social impact of faults. First, we showed correlation ratio of attributes to work efficiency and unit cost. Then, we analyzed each attributes using boxplots. As a result, business sectors related to both work efficiency and unit cost. The boxplots are useful to estimate software maintenance cost roughly.