Maintenance Matters
In case I haven’t said it explicitly enough, I’ll do so again here.
I wrote these definitions a couple years ago in an effort to bring some formality to what would be covered under a maintenance contract. They served well enough to pass along here.
Major Issue: Problems that impede core functionality, such as:
- application fails to load
- users cannot log in
- workflows are inaccessible or fail
Minor Issue: Problems that do not impede core functionality, such as:
- slow, but functional, responses to user interactions
- workflows succeed but are sub-optimal
- typos and visual glitches
Feature Enhancement: Updates that meet all of the following criteria:
- do not fundamentally alter an existing capability
- do not create a new user workflow
- do not require new integrations with or data from external systems
New Feature: Updates that meet one or more of the following criteria:
- add a capability that did not previously exist in the system
- create a new user workflow
- require integration with an external system
Environments
- Dev: where software engineers do their daily development work
- QA: where vendor work is tested before going to customer for acceptance
- UAT: where customer performs final test and acceptance of features
- Production: where users access the system