Empirical evidence on the maintainability of object-oriented systems is far from conclusive, partly due to lack of representativeness of the subjects and systems used in the study. The present research empirically examined this issue with the systems that are mission-critical. currently operational and maintained by professionals. It was found that the 00 group appeared to consume less time while maintaining more amount of software artifacts than the NOO counterpart. This economical utilization of time appeared evident regardless of software development life cycle. This was due to the usefulness of UML for impact analysis which contributed to effective comprehension and communication. Insufficient design specifications led to ambiguity and costly defects in transferring design solutions to development. Also. the encapsulation of 00 seemed to reduce mental loads at maintenance tasks and improved code reuse. However, the number of files to manage increased and thus. dependency management is required for the 00 systems.