There are several tasks that need to be executed when a product is live, thus being in what is called a maintenance phase. Understanding the nature of these tasks is crucial to the day to day operations of any digital product. They are usually organised as follows:
Let's see in detail how each of those situations works out.
In any of the situations that fall under preventive and corrective maintenance, the product owner will need a team to deal with existing issues. But contrarily to what most people believe, the majority of digital products don't need a team working 24/7. All they need is a team that is able to keep an eye on the system and intervene when things all go south. But when the proper measures are in place, modern technology is stable enough to promote support only during business hours.
The time dedicated to maintenance is usually contracted via a retainer. To maximize efficiency, the team usually keeps an eye on several different products, and has optimized processes for services such as server monitoring and security patching, just to name a couple.
However, in some particular cases, you might indeed require 24/7 support, and this service is a beast on its own. In this case, one should be prepared to pay a premium price, usually to a company dedicated only to maintenance contracts. Agencies that are not dedicated to this service will have trouble providing a 24/7 service, as it'll require complex procedures that only work at a much larger scale.
In any case, it's crucial to correctly judge the situation and be able to find the appropriate solution. There's a difference between correcting bugs and building a whole system to strengthen a particular vulnerability. Hiring a full-time support team is almost never the answer to either.
Tasks of the third type - evolutive maintenance - regard mostly business growth and service improvement. Usually, these support projects can be planned and executed in a timely manner. Ideally, you want to put a list of tasks together, and then ask your technology partner to assemble a team and deal with it in a couple of sprints.
A common question concerning maintenance is how much one should expect to spend on it. Industry numbers usually point to 10-20% of the overall product cost per year for preventive and corrective maintenance. Numbers will most likely be different for evolutive maintenance, as these tasks are often tied up to how much the product will grow in terms of users and features.
Always ask the following questions when starting a new product:
Work on the answer from day zero with your software development partner. Be open about your concerns, expect that virtually anything can be the origin of a future problem and foresee as much as possible everything that can go wrong. This will help avoid a situation where, after the product goes live, you end up with a problem that can't be solved without conflict. When this happens, the first to suffer will be your users and, consequently, your business.
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CEO @ Imaginary Cloud and co-author of the Product Design Process book. I enjoy food, wine, and Krav Maga (not necessarily in this order).
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