www.ccsenet.org/cis Computer and Information Science Vol. 3, No. 3; August 2010 ISSN 1913-8989 E-ISSN 1913-8997 180 Utilizing Usability Evaluating Model in Applying CMM to Improve the Quality of Software Maintenance Process Amir Mohamed Talib Faculty of Computer Science & IT, University Putra Malaysia 43400 UPM, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia E-mail:ganawa53@yahoo.com Rusli Abdullah Faculty of Computer Science & IT, Information System Department, University Putra Malaysia 43400 UPM, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia E-mail: rusli@fsktm.upm.edu.my Abstract Maintenance plays an important role in the life cycle of a software product. It is estimated that there are more than 100 billion lines of code in production in the world. As much as 80% of it is unstructured, patched and not well documented. Maintenance can alleviate these problems. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to improve the quality of software maintenance process (SMP). The architecture of the CMM model has been retained almost as is while its content, which was specific to the development process, has been either modified or extended to take into account the characteristics specified to the maintenance function, these characteristics were then organized into key process areas (KPAs) of CMM model. This paper applied the definition of (ISO 9241-11, 1998) that examines effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The emphasis will be given to the SMP activities Keywords: Software maintenance, CMM, Software life cycle, Software maintenance process, Usability evaluating model, Software development 1. Introduction Within the budget allocated to software in major corporations, the maintenance process is often taking the greatest share of software corporate resources: for many of these organizations, between 50% and 70% of the software budget is allocated to the maintenance process (Arthur, (1988)); (Swanson and Beath, (1989)); (Sharpe, (1991)). It is felt that software maintenance has not received it proportionate share of management attention and that it has suffered from lack of planning, thus resulting typically in crisis management. Within this context, software maintenance is perceived as expensive and ineffective. The literature search has not come up with diagnostic techniques to evaluate the quality of the maintenance process of a given organization, nor to identify an improvement path (Arthur, (1988)); (Swanson and Beath, (1989)); (Sharpe, (1991)). Evaluation models must support the following three management objectives: Ü At the operational level they provide a detailed analysis and evaluation of a business process and of its key process. Ü At the tactical level, they identify the strengths and weaknesses of each process as well as a progression path, should there be a decision taken within a continuous improvement process program. They also provide a map to develop an action plan to address the strengths and weaknesses within the set of organizational priorities and allocation of resources. Ü At the strategic level, they provide to the senior executives the relative positioning of their organizations within their competitive environment. Based on this evaluation, priorities are then set, which lead to the allocation of scarce corporate resources to meet the corporate objectives. 2. Literature Review 2.1 Software Maintenance Process (Pigoski, 2002) advice is to focus on a few key characteristics when measuring the software and not measure everything. It is better to use a few measures that are well understood rather than many measures that are not.