An optimal software enhancement and customer growth model: a control-theoretic approach

Purpose Recently, the popularity of software has grown significantly in the market. Enhancement of software is needed to decrease the burden of getting high-quality and reliable software. To achieve this, the software is upgraded by adding new features to the previous version. Therefore, adding new features in the last version to be consistent with the earlier version is challenging. This paper aims to discuss the optimal software enhancement and customer growth model. Design/methodology/approach This paper discusses a model when new features are added to the software, and the customers' adoption of the software is presented as a customer growth model. An optimal control problem is introduced to maximize the profit obtained from the software system over the system's lifetime period. Total gain is calculated by the value generated from selling the software over the total expenditure during the software development process. The closed-form solution and some theoretical results are presented using the optimal control-theoretic approach. The theoretical results are supported by a numerical example. Findings This paper gives several substantive insights during sensitivity analysis and provides essential results. The results discussed here are compatible with the actual scenario and useful in software enhancement. Originality/value The authors have proposed a new feature growth and customer growth model to maximize the total profit using optimal control theory.