Maintainability

Return to Terms and Definitions

Discussion

Maintainability describes the ability of a governed function implementation to support analysis, correction, update, testing, and controlled change. In the Governed Node Service Market, Maintainability supports long-term operation, qualification continuity, defect correction, policy updates, configuration review, version control, auditability, and retirement of obsolete implementations. Maintainability matters because a Qualified Node must continue to satisfy its governed function obligations after fixes, updates, configuration changes, policy changes, interface changes, or deployment changes. A maintainable implementation supports controlled change without weakening qualification, evidence obligations, service-level expectations, or interoperability.

Definition

ability of a governed function implementation to support analysis, correction, update, testing, and controlled change

Source

Financial Systems Archetype, Part 7: Governed Node Service Market

Note

Maintainability supports long-term operation and governance. A maintainable Node supports version control, defect correction, configuration review, test evidence, controlled release, rollback, and retirement of obsolete versions.

Maintainability differs from Portability. Portability concerns movement across approved platforms, runtimes, or deployment environments. Maintainability concerns controlled analysis, correction, update, testing, and change of the implementation.

Example

A policy evaluation Node receives a controlled policy update, runs regression tests, records version evidence, and continues to satisfy the same governed function obligations.