Glossary - M

maintainability: (1) a developer-oriented quality requirement specifying the degree to which minor defects can be corrected correctability and minor enhancements can be made extensibility between major releases to an application or component while it is in use by its users.; (2) a quality factor measuring the degree to which minor defects can be corrected and minor enhancements can be made between major releases to an application or component while it is in use by its users.
maintenance: the activity during which minor enhancements (a.k.a., adaptive maintenance) and corrections (a.k.a., perfective maintenance) are made to an application while it is in use by the user organizations.
maintenance organization: the organization that maintains an application once it has been deployed to the user organizations.
maintenance team: a team that maintains one or more applications.
management: the activity consisting of those tasks that are performed to ensure that the mission of a project is fulfilled by planning and controlling its scope, schedule, costs, resources, and communication.
See also program management and project management.
management plan: the management work product documenting the plans for managing an endeavor.
management planning: the management task during which the overriding plans for performing administrative management are developed and maintained.
management set: the set of all work products produced during the management activity.
Contrast with architecture set, configuration management set, deployment set, design set, implementation set, management set, process set, requirements set, and test set.
manager: the role that is played when a person performs the tasks of the management activity.
market analysis: 1) the requirements engineering task during which the customer's competitive marketplace is analyzed.; 2) the requirements engineering work product documenting the results of the analysis of the customer’s competitive marketplace.
Contrast with customer analysis and user analysis.
marketing organization: the organization that markets the applications and components produced by the development organization to potential customer organizations.
marketing representative: the role that is played when a person represents a marketing organization in interactions with members of development organizations and customer organizations.
Master Schedule: the management work product that documents the master schedule of all important planned dates (e.g., milestones) for a single endeavor.
master test list (MTL): the testing work product that summarizes the system and launch tests on a project.
m-commerce: mobile (i.e., wireless) electronic commerce.
media server: a server computer that provides encoded media (e.g., music, television, movies) to client computers that will play the media to their users.
mechanism: a major architectural decision or invention concerning a general behavior of an application.
For example, a mechanism could describe how part of the architecture ensures that a certain quality requirement is met.
mesh network: a network in which redundant links exist between multiple computers so that the network has a weblike topology.
Contrast with bus network, ring network, and star network.
method: 1) a synonym for process and methodology.; 2) an operation performed by an object.
methodologist: the role that is played by a person who acts as an expert in delivery or development methods.
methodology: the study of delivery and development methods.
metric: the measure of some value that describes a component or endeavor. Examples include quality metrics, size and complexity metrics, and progress metrics.
metrics analyst: the role that is played when a person produces metrics for an endeavor.
metrics engineering: the activity consisting of the cohesive collection of all tasks that primarily deal with the metrics that are used on an endeavor.
metrics plan (MP): the management work product that documents the plans for collecting, analyzing, and reporting project metrics.
metrics report: the management work product that is used to regularly report project metrics.
metrics team: the team that performs metrics engineering tasks on an endeavor.
metropolitan area network (MAN): a network in which all interconnected computers are distributed across a town, city, or metropolitan area.
Contrast with local area network (LAN) and personal area network (PAN) and wide area network (WAN).
milestone: a stage representing a scheduled point in time during the delivery process by which a cohesive set of significant objectives is to be achieved.
misuse case: A special kind of use case that specifies one or more security requirements by specifying how to handle interactions with malicious actors and external applications.
Contrast with change case.
model: an abstraction (simplification) of something that captures its essential characteristics (for some specific purpose) while ignoring unimportant or diversionary details.
See also business model, object model, state model, and use case model.
modeling language: a language for specifying or documenting models.
Contrast with implementation language and natural language.
See also OPEN Modeling Language and Unified Modeling Language.
model set: the cohesive set of all work products that may be produced during modeling tasks.
model testing: the subactivity of testing of a model to identify defects before the model is implemented in code.
Example the testing of a class diagram by creating sequence diagrams.
Note that model testing involves the execution of the model using the "wetware" computer (i.e., human brain), either on a whiteboard or using an upperCASE tool.