Supporting sustainability design in agile software development

Abstract

Agile methodologies are widely utilized by a significant number of software companies, both in Finland and globally. With the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations, it is crucial to explore how to integrate them into agile software development and to develop guidelines within that context of agile software development and develop guidelines and tools to incorporate sustainability into the process. There are approaches to sustainability in software development; however, few exist within agile software development.

This dissertation addresses sustainability issues in agile software development by examining the associated challenges and identifying practical solutions to overcome them. The ultimate goal is to create a model that supports design that enables sustainability impacts in agile software development. The objectives of this dissertation are as follows: 1) Identify the challenges that hinder sustainability in agile software development, as well as existing approaches to address these challenges; 2) Investigate the perspectives of Finnish software practitioners on sustainability challenges, their impacts, and potential strategies for improving sustainability in agile software development; and 3) Integrate sustainable design principles into agile software development practices.

The study emphasizes three key points: 1) the necessity for greater awareness of sustainability, 2) the lack of research on sustainability within the context of agile software development, highlighting the need for further investigation in this area, and 3) the importance of utilizing existing approaches and developing novel ones to enhance sustainability in agile software development. The research concludes that incorporating sustainability design into agile software development increases sustainability awareness among software practitioners, improves individuals’ well-being, enhances the quality and efficiency of both the development process and software products, and reduces negative impacts on individuals, society, and the environment.

The recognized challenges included, but were not limited to, a lack of understanding and insufficient sustainability education among software professionals. The main practical contribution of this dissertation is a sustainability integration model for Scrum-based agile software development. The model consists of (1) sustainability-awareness activities based on SuSAF, (2) sustainability-oriented backlog templates, and (3) sprint retrospective guidance for evaluating sustainability impacts. This doctoral dissertation presents a sustainability model to help practitioners integrate sustainability into agile software development.