Separate maintenance categories
Corrective work fixes defects; preventive work keeps dependencies and infrastructure healthy; product evolution adds or changes features. These activities require different planning. Define what the support agreement includes and how urgent issues are handled. A stable product may still need updates when a platform or integration changes.
Define monitoring and service levels
Agree which failures are monitored, how they are reported and who responds. Crash reporting, uptime checks and release monitoring can expose issues before support requests accumulate. Specify response windows and escalation rather than relying on a vague promise of permanent availability. Connect the service level to the actual importance of the product.
Reduce avoidable support work
Document the architecture, release process and recurring tasks. Keep tests for critical journeys and make ownership of cloud and store accounts explicit. Review dependencies and operational costs regularly. Plan improvements separately from incident work so that the product remains maintainable without allowing the maintenance budget to become an unbounded feature backlog.