Maintenance

Here is an added list of secrets:

• New Secret #1 - Stop the bleeding first. Implement a Standard Operating Environment standard that restricts the introduction of too many new technologies and identifies the one that are going out. This will promote the use of some and discourage some other. 
• New Secret #2 - If old harware makes it to the museum should'nt it be time to stop running old software in production and move it to the museum?
• New Secret #3 - Stop pushing garbage into production. Its time to put a formal transition process in place. If its not finished its not ready to be maintained.
• New Secret #4 - Hire people in maintenance first. Anyone who has not maintained a software cannot understand how to develop one. Its a simple affair and you have to walk in those shoes first or else you cannot understand how to develop maintainable code.
• New Secret #5 - All development projects must deliver a test system on a test platform. Enough of delivering only code and documentation. Give us your test system and all the test cases and tools. If you did not build this how the hell did you test that software?
• New Secret #6 - The software project must give us the defect list and the SLA terms before the transition can be completed. If they developed a software without any SLA terms it means that there are no formal quality characteristics in that software. We need to know that before we take over the responsibility for this software.
• Secret #7 - Cleanup the process so that it helps out instead of slowing down everyone. Maintenance is already 'agile'. As a friend said recently 'with everyone using agile now it all looks like maintenance to me!'. Consider having separate maintenance groups as it raises awareness of quality issues at delivery time and beforehand.
• Secret #8 - Get on with measuring the productivity and use www.isbsg.org database to compare. This is a wise decision before your boss decides to ask you for the numbers because he thinks of Offshoring.