A Systems Thinking Approach to Improve Sustainability in Software Engineering—A Grounded Capability Maturity Framework

Abstract

Sustainability has become a critical issue for the software industry as the environmental impact of software development and use increases. To address this issue, organizations need a framework for developing and accessing sustainable software practices. In this study, we reviewed the existing literature, models, and practices in this domain as well as carried out surveys and interviews to understand the reality, practices, and challenges on the ground. We identified a set of research questions to discover why sustainability is important, what actions can be taken to improve it, and how and when they can be implemented. This study highlighted the limitations of existing models and the need to address the research gaps. Existing research is limited by a narrow focus on specific domains such as the environment and energy or a specific phase of software development. We aim to address these through the proposed comprehensive software sustainability capability framework (SSCF), which provides a “ready reckoner”, allowing any organization to assess their current software sustainability and the capabilities and metrics they could focus on to improve sustainable software maturity. This paper also provides detailed assessment criteria, metrics, and a roadmap that can be used by any software organization to enhance their sustainability.

Integrating Sustainability Metrics into Project and Portfolio Performance Assessment in Agile Software Development: A Data-Driven Scoring Model

“…Efficient software consumes less power, requires less hardware, and can intelligently control machine behavior to reduce energy consumption [12]. When exploring the concept of sustainability within the realm of software and software engineering, it is crucial to analyze the matter from two distinct perspectives: the sustainability of the software itself and the utilization of software to achieve sustainability [13]. The former, referred to as sustainable software, is characterized by its durability, maintainability, and cost-efficiency.…”