ACI Blog Article - Global Technology Services

How to Improve Application Support & Maintenance

Written by ACI Info | February 2, 2023 at 6:37 PM

As technology continues to change and advance, the techniques and tools used by developers are also evolving. Gone are the days of using a pen and paper for documentation; today's developers use the power of computers to create digital products that are more accessible, efficient, and effective than ever before.

A press release by Gartner showed that compared to 2022, where traditional solutions account for 41% of IT investment in the application software, infrastructure software, business process services, and system infrastructure industries, that percentage will have increased to 51% by 2025.But this evolution isn't just happening in the way we work—it's also changing how we treat application development itself. As computer science becomes more accessible and easier to learn (and as software becomes cheaper, more people are able to take advantage of its benefits. This means that even though the process of building an app may have changed with time, it's never been easier for anyone to get started on their journey toward becoming a developer!

You must be able to provide the highest level of service and support for your customers. With the right tools, processes, and people in place, it can be much easier than you think. In this article, we'll explore how technology is changing how we treat application development so you can learn about all that's going on in your industry!

Get Your Team on Board

The first step to improving application maintenance and support is getting your team on board. This can be a challenge, especially if you’re not sure how much support they will need or what resources you need to get them started. If you have no idea about how much help your team would require, then it might be worth considering hiring someone who specializes in this area. There are plenty of professional services available that can provide advice and guidance on how best to approach this issue within your organization.

Getting everyone involved at an early stage will ensure that everyone understands the importance of maintaining good software quality, which in turn ensures that all stakeholders feel confident that their needs will be met when applying these best practices into practice (and so forth).

Better Communication

Communication is key to any project. It’s the core of a successful team, and it can make or break your application maintenance and support efforts. The first step in improving communication is being aware of what kind of communication you have going on within your organization, especially when it comes to managing projects. If there are multiple people involved with an application (and by extension, multiple teams), then everyone must know what their role is and how they fit into the larger picture. This way there won't be any confusion about who should do what—and if there are questions or concerns about how something should be done, someone will always know where one person stands relative to another.

  • Identify and prioritize issues
  • Identify and prioritize issues
  • Communicate the issues to the team.
  • Communicate the issues to the customer.
  • Communicate the issues to your business.

Establish an Issue-Tracking System

An issue-tracking system is software that tracks issues and defects, so you can fix them. You can use it to manage issues in your application development environment (ADE) or on the production server.

Here are some of the benefits of using an issue-tracking system:

  • It makes it easier for developers, testers, and support staff to track all known issues with the product.
  • It enables you to prioritize which issues need addressing first by assigning them a priority level from low (1) through high (4). The higher the priority level assigned to each issue, the more critical it becomes for getting fixed fast!

Standardize the application development environment (ADE)

Standardizing the application development environment (ADE) can help you:

  • Create a consistent environment for all developers to work in. This makes it easier for everyone involved in an application project to understand what is expected from them and how they should proceed with their work. In addition, it helps ensure that any changes made by different teams don't inadvertently interfere with each other's efforts or introduce bugs into the code base as well as other projects being worked upon at the same time.
  • Make sure that updates are applied consistently throughout all stages of development - including test suites and deployment scripts - which will prevent issues such as regressions when users experience problems after updates have been deployed on production servers.

Identify and Document Necessary Expertise and Skills Required in the Team

Documentation is an important part of your application maintenance and support process. It helps you identify what expertise and skills are required in the team, as well as how they can be used to solve problems.

Documentation should be created by everyone on the team—not just developers or support staff—and everyone needs to know where it is located so that it's easy for them to find when needed. In addition, documentation should include information about any tools used in development or support; this includes both technical documentation about their software (including design documents) as well as non-technical documents describing how users interact with those products via training materials, and user manuals, help desk tickets etcetera.

Choose the Right Tool and Technology Stack

Choosing the right tool and technology stack is key to improving your application maintenance and support. Use open-source tools. Open-source tools are often easier to use, learn and maintain than commercial ones because they're developed by a community of developers instead of one company.

They also tend not to have as many features or capabilities as their commercial counterparts, which means you won't have to spend time learning how to use them when you can just dive right into using them. Choose tools that are compatible with your existing tools. For example, if you're using Microsoft SQL Server database management system (DBMS), then choosing a tool like MySQL isn't going into account since there are many differences between these two products—so choose wisely!

Reduce the Number of Defects by Performing Code Reviews Regularly!

Code reviews can be a valuable tool to reduce the number of defects in your code. Code reviews are best performed by both functional and technical people, and they should be done at different stages in the development process. The goal is not only to find bugs but also to improve your design so that it's easy for others to work with, maintain and extend.

Code reviews should be conducted by experts who understand what makes good software so that they can help you make improvements where needed:

  • Pre-release - early on in the project (before any code has been written) when there are few resources available.
  • Post-release - after release when there are more resources available but still some room for improvement.

To keep your Code Support Needs Growing, You Often Need to Improve and Enhance Your Code Support Practices.

The first step is to understand why code support is important. Code supporting software is used in almost every industry, from healthcare and financial services to manufacturing and retailing. Code supporting software helps organizations achieve their goals by making it easy for users (including contractors) or employees who need assistance with technical issues or new features on their computer systems (often referred to as “IT” teams).

The second step involves identifying areas where improvement can be made with regards to how we maintain our systems so they are available when needed most; whether that be during peak times or after hours when normal business operations cease due to failure within one of our infrastructure components such as servers/hardware/networking equipment etcetera which causes us not being able not only maintain availability but also recover quickly from any incident caused due malfunctioning hardware due lack thereof maintenance procedures followed correctly.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, there are many ways in which an organization can enhance its application maintenance and support processes—and the key is to find the right combination of tools, processes, policies, and procedures for your unique needs.

We are living in an era of digitalization. We are shifting from a time when we used to have to physically go to a shop or office to get certain services done, to a time when we can just use the internet and complete our tasks. Application development has been one of the most affected areas by this change. The reason is simple: as software makes things easier, it also makes it easier for us to automate tasks that were once done manually. For example, if you want your website to automatically send out an email whenever someone makes a purchase on your store, it is easier for you to write a script than having someone manually input all the details about the transaction into your system.