Standard PCA Project Phases [Click on any Phase for Detail]
Click here to learn about PCA Consultation and Evaluation Phase Click here to learn about PCA Prototype Design Phase Click here to learn about PCA Detailed Design Phase Click here to learn about PCA Development Phase Click here to learn about PCA Testing and Refinement Phase Click here to learn about PCA Migration and Deployment Phase Click here to learn about PCA Maintenance and Support Phase

Maintenance and Support

After your new Smart Client application has been successfully deployed into production, PCA requires a minimum one-year maintenance and support services agreement, to address a variety of issues that result from actual production use.
  • Bugs in the application can surface that were never exposed by PCA or our Client during the testing phase.
  • Clients frequently rely on PCA to solve problems or provide enhancements to an application that is in production mode — changes that are unforeseeable, and usually require our immediate attention. It is far more cost-effective for PCA (and hence for our Clients) to dedicate the necessary level of engineering resources over a period of time vs. dealing with individual application maintenance and support issues as they arise. The effort required for PCA to evaluate, cost, code, test, manage, deploy and verify individual items as they arise requires unnecessary project management and administrative overhead — overhead costs that can be avoided by a well-managed maintenance and support program.
  • PCA annual maintenance and support fees can range from 15% to 25% of the total Project fee, and are paid monthly over a one year period. Factors that impact the maintenance and support fee include: the volume and complexity of changes and refinements that we expect, your available resources and expertise (ability to support yourself), and level of PCA services (response times, 24/7 coverage, etc.).
  • Once your Project is complete, we will have a pretty good understanding of your support needs, and we will work with you to determine an appropriate monthly maintenance and support fee. PCA provides support tools and a process that we use to capture and track Client support requests and status, and track associated engineering efforts, so we can always reconcile actual vs. plan usage. PCA will send you an Annual Maintenance and Support Agreement following completion of your Project.
Enhancements to your application discovered thru actual production use are commonplace. New functions and refinements to existing capabilities might be needed, and opportunities might arise to further streamline your business process.   At Client's request, PCA will provide estimates to modify and/or extend the application capabilities.