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Lack of Incentive for Maintainable Code

publish date: 2026/06/24 21:16:13.499984 UTC

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Why might a development team have little incentive to write maintainable software when maintenance is handled by a different company?

Because the development team gets no direct benefit from investing extra effort to make software easier to maintain, since they will not be responsible for maintaining it

Because maintainable code is always illegal to write under software licensing law

Because writing maintainable code always takes the exact same amount of time as writing unmaintainable code

Because maintenance contracts always specify that code must be deliberately hard to maintain

Correct Answer

Because the development team gets no direct benefit from investing extra effort to make software easier to maintain, since they will not be responsible for maintaining it

Explanation

When the maintenance contract is separate from the development contract, often with a different company responsible for maintenance, the original development team gets no benefit from investing effort in maintainability. If a team can cut corners to save development effort, it is rational for them to do so even though this makes future changes harder.

Reference

Software Engineering, Ian Sommerville, 10th edition

Quizzes you can take where this question appears

Why Maintenance Costs More Than New Development