Maintaining IS quality

Information systems quality is most commonly thought of as achieved primarily from a system's original design and development. In fact, it is achieved substantially from the system's subsequent maintenance after being entered into production. IS maintenance is, in other words, fundamentally an activity of quality achievement and maintenance. The term 'quality' may be associated with four definitions: quality is excellence, quality is value, quality is conformance to specifications and quality is meeting and/or exceeding customer's expectations. IS maintenance is basic to achieving quality in each definitional case. We explain why, drawing from our own empirical research as well as that of others.