What is Sustaining Software Engineering?
Last updated: February 22, 2024 Read in fullscreen view
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"Sustaining" is another word for "maintenance": it's what happens after software is released, i.e. support, bug fixing, enhancements
Sustaining Software Engineering is the department responsible for implementing hot-fixes for released products, and handling customer service issues that the tech-support guys can't resolve on their own.
Sustaining Engineering involves the identification, review, assessment, and resolution of deficiencies throughout a system's life cycle. Sustaining Engineering both returns a system to its baseline configuration and capability, and identifies opportunities for performance and capability enhancement.
Many in the software world define sustaining engineering as the bug fix team. While this is a part of the duties involved the sustaining engineering group should also be looking at the overall defect trends to help identify areas needing re-factoring. The focus of the group should be to not just fix bugs as they come in but to be the conduit back into engineering to ELIMINATE needless calls from customers. That might involve "works as designed" issues as well as product areas the customers just have a hard time understanding.