Actionable Analytics for Strategic Maintenance of Critical Software: An Industry Experience Report

NASA has been successfully sustaining the continuous operation of its critical navigation software systems for over 12 years. To accomplish this, NASA scientists must continuously monitor their process, report on current system quality, forecast maintenance effort, and sustain required staffing levels. This report presents some examples of the use of a robust software metrics and analytics program that enables actionable strategic maintenance management of a critical system (Monte) in a timely, economical, and risk-controlled fashion. This article is part of a special issue on Actionable Analytics for Software Engineering.