Monteiro, AndréVieira, Gonçalo2022-02-172022-02-172022-01-31Monteiro, A., & Vieira, G. (2022). Guiding legacy systems for evolution. PmatE: a case study of maintenance and engineering. Journal of Information Systems Engineering and Management, 7(1), 11689. https://doi.org/10.55267/iadt.07.116892468-4376http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/39400Even though software change is inevitable, accurate maintenance can extend software lifespan in a subtle way when both budget and time constraints get in the way of software replacement. In the University of Aveiro, the project PmatE – a quiz web platform created to encourage students to like Math – emerged in the early 1990’s and stacked several applications over the decades without major planning, cleaning or upgrade. This resulted in a huge-sized framework that was crucial to be always available and online and had high operational cost, leading to an increasing amount of technical debt. After 3 decades, the project was studied, refactored and refurbished, leading to a stable consistent framework ready for evolution and software spinouts. This work shows how to manage and engineer solutions to maintain a legacy system and evolve it even when tied up to heavy constraints.engSoftware engineeringsoftware maintenancesoftware evolutionjournal article10.55267/iadt.07.11689