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Companies don’t make money fixing software and making it more stable, reliable, and dependable. Instead, companies make money by selling new versions of their programs that offer additional features and options that most people probably don’t use, need, or even want in the first place.

Still, because so many programs undergo modification to take advantage of new hardware or software, you may find yourself occasionally upgrading a program by adding new features to it. The following steps make up the upgrade cycle:

1. Determine what new feature you want to add to the program.

2. Plan how this new feature is to work (by using pseudocode or another tool to help structure your ideas).

3. Modify the program to add this new feature.

4. Test this new feature (by using alpha testing) to make sure that it works and doesn’t introduce new bugs into the program.

5. Fix any problems that occur during alpha testing.

6. Give out copies of the program to other people to beta test.

7. Fix any problems that the beta testers report.

8. Repeat Steps 1 through 7 for each new feature that you need to add to the program.

9. Release the program as a new version and wait for the public to start reporting bugs that keep the program from working correctly so that you can start the maintenance cycle all over again.

Remember Despite all the university courses and such important-sounding titles as “software engineer,” programming is still less of a science and more of an art. Writing, modifying, and updating software doesn’t require a high IQ or an advanced mathematics degree as much as it requires creativity, determination, and plenty of imagination. You can write a program any way that you want, but the best way to prevent possible problems later on is to be organized and methodical in your approach.

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