Software maintenance in easy (to write down) steps

The software maintenance process consists of feature requests and problem solving. Despite it being a lengthy process, it's usually not continuous, and work comes in chunks from time to time. When another request or bug report comes in, this is how it generally handle it:

1. open the application/web page etc. asses what functionality is in there already


2. identify the code. make sure you understand it. see what is implemented and what is not. if something is messy, refactor it before you start writing new code


3. evaluate your choices. what would be the best way to implement this to make future changes as easy as possible ?


4. pick one of the solutions. pray you won't curse your choice later


5. implement it


6. take it out for a test drive, for the scenario it was build to solve


7. check it back with the testers/clients. did they got what they wanted ?


8. if it's not what they wanted, is it what they needed ? If the answer is yes, help them see that.


9. otherwise, make the required changes. don't tweak/hack to much, write it clean if possible, otherwise it will come back and haunt you later (I've got a real poltergeist on my hands right now :D)

I've been doing a lot of maintenance lately - you can imagine, if I got to standardize what may seam as such a common-sense process :D. But this pattern kept on showing up. I think step 3 is where you should be especially careful - though understanding the existing code can be really hard too.