Abstract
Sustainability is a promise by agile development, as it is part of both the Agile Alliance’s and the Scrum Alliance’s vision. Thus far, however, not much has been delivered on this promise. This chapter explores the Agile Manifesto and points out how agility could contribute to sustainability in its three dimensions – social, economic, and environmental. Additionally, it provides some sample cases of companies focusing on both sustainability (partially or holistically) and agile development.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agile Alliance (2020) Agile alliance vision. https://www.agilealliance.org/the-alliance/
Scrum Alliance (2020) Scrum Alliance Vision. https://www.scrumalliance.org/
Beck K, Beedle M, van Bennekum A, Cockburn A, Cunningham W, Fowler M, Grenning J, Highsmith J, Hunt A, Jeffries R, Kern J, Marick B, Martin RC, Mellor S, Schwaber K, Sutherland J, Thomas D (2001) Manifesto for agile software development. http://www.agilemanifesto.org/
Hilty LM, Aebischer B (2015) ICT for sustainability: an emerging research field. In: Hilty LM, Aebischer B (eds) ICT innovations for sustainability. Springer International Publishing, pp 3–36
WCED (1987) Our common future. Oxford University Press
Wikipedia (2004) Wikipedia sustainability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability
World Summit (2005) World summit on social development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_World_Summit
Purvis B, Mao Y, Robinson D (2019) Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins. Sustain Sci 14(3):681–695
Investopedia (2020) Triple bottom line. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/triple-bottom-line.asp
United Nations General Assembly (2015) Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Technical report, United Nations
Borowski P, Patuk I (2018) Selected aspects of sustainable development in agriculture. In: Proceedings: 2nd international conference on food and agricultural economics, pp 154–160. ICFAEC
The American Heritage Dictionary (2020) Definition of business. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=business
Business Roundtable (2020) Our commitment to our employees and communities. https://opportunity.businessroundtable.org/
Business Roundtable (2020) Embracing sustainability challenge. https://www.businessroundtable.org/policy-perspectives/energy-environment/sustainability
Benefit Corporation: General questions. https://benefitcorp.net/faq (2020)
Economy for the Common Good (2020) What is ECG. https://www.ecogood.org/what-is-ecg/
Sousa TC, Melo CO (2019) Encyclopedia of the UN sustainable development goals: industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG9), Chapter Sustainable infrastructure, industrial ecology and eco-innovation: positive impact on society, pp 1–10. Springer International Publishing
Hilty LM, Aebischer B, Andersson G, Lohmann W (eds) (2013) Proceedings of the first international conference on information and communication technologies for sustainability. ETH Zurich, University of Zurich and Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology
Kurtz CF, Snowden DJ (2003) The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Syst J 42(3):462–483
Frick T (2016) Designing for sustainability: a guide to building greener digital products and services. O’Reilly Media
Mortsiefer H (2017) The market doesn’t want electric cars. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/auto-der-zukunft-der-markt-will-elektroautos-nicht/19634320.html
O’Riordan T, Cameron J (2013) Interpreting the precautionary principle. Taylor & Francis
Tenner E (1997) Why things bite back: technology and the revenge effect. Fourth Estate
Omidyar Network (2020) Ethical explorer. https://ethicalexplorer.org
Beck K (2000) Extreme programming explained. Embrace change. Addison Wesley, Reading, MA
Blauer Engel (2020) Ressourcen- und energieeffiziente softwareprodukte. https://www.blauer-engel.de/de/get/productcategory/171/ressourcen-und-energieeffiziente-softwareprodukte
Kern E, Hilty LM, Guldner A, Maksimov YV, Filler A, Gröger J, Naumann S (2018) Sustainable software products - towards assessment criteria for resource and energy efficiency. Future Gener Comput Syst 86:199–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2018.02.044
Melo C d O (2019) Another purpose for agility: sustainability. In: Meirelles P, Nelson MA, Rocha C (eds) Agile methods: 10th Brazilian workshop, WBMA 2019. Springer International Publishing, pp 3–7
Chappellet-Lanier T (2019) After protest, open source software company Chef will let ICE contract expire. https://www.fedscoop.com/protest-open-source-software-company-chef-will-let-ice-contract-expire
ITU (2017) E-waste monitor. https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Climate-Change/Pages/Global-E-waste-Monitor-2017.aspx
Jones N (2018) How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity. Nature 561:163–166. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06610-y
Wirth N (1995) A plea for lean software. Computer 28(2):64–68. https://doi.org/10.1109/2.348001
Gröger J, Herterich M (2019) Obsolete by software. how to keep digital hardware longer alive. In: Höfner VF (ed) What connects bits and trees: making digitization sustainable. oekom, Munich, pp 58–60
Internet Health Report (2018): The Internet uses more electricity than … https://internethealthreport.org/2018/the-internet-uses-more-electricity-than
Matsakis L (2019) Amazon employees will walk out over the company’s climate change inaction. https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-walkout-climate-change
Google (2018) Moving toward 24x7 carbon-free energy at google data centers: progress and insights. Technical report, Google
Hilty L, Aebischer B (2015) ICT innovations for sustainability. Adv Intell Syst Comput 310. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09228-7
Cone Communications (2017) Cone communications CSR study. https://www.conecomm.com/news-blog/2017/5/15/americans-willing-to-buy-or-boycott-companies-based-on-corporate-values-according
Wikipedia (2020) Munich re. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Re
Munich RE (2019) Corporate responsibility report. https://www.munichre.com/content/ dam/munichre/global/content-pieces/documents/cr-report-2019.pdf/_jcr_content/renditions/original./cr-report-2019.pdf
Jacobson I. Munich re transforms application development with lean and agile practices. https://www.ivarjacobson.com/sites/default/files/field_iji_file/article/munich_re_case_study.pdf
Business Agility Institute (2020). https://businessagility.institute/
UN Environment (2019) Champions of the earth 2019. https://www.unenvironment.org/championsofearth/laureates?title=&field_award_year_value=2019&field_award_category_target_id=All
CNN Money (2016) Patagonia’s black Friday sales hit $10 million – and will donate it all. https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/29/technology/patagonia-black-friday-donation-10-million/index.html
McKinsey (2019) The five trademarks of agile organisations. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-five-trademarks-of-agile-organizations
Patagonia (2016) Environmental + social initiatives. https://issuu.com/thecleanestline/docs/patagonia-enviro-2016-europe-eng?e=1043061/44692562
Wahl DC (2018) Why sustainability is no longer enough, yet still very important on the road to regeneration. https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/sustainability-is-no-longer-enough-yet-still-very-important-on-the-road-to-regeneration-57f5a37e05a
Rhodes CJ (2017) The imperative for regenerative agriculture. Sci Prog 100(1):80–129
DSM-Niaga (2020) Design out waste. Design for circularity. https://www.dsm-niaga.com/design.html
Laloux F (2014) Reinventing organizations: a guide to creating organizations inspired by the next stage in human consciousness. Nelson Parker
World Economic Forum (2020) Stakeholder principles in the COVID Era. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Stakeholder_Principles_COVID_Era.pdf
DSM-Niaga (2020) Design for circularity with Niaga. https://www.dsm.com/corporate/solutions/resources-circularity/design-for-circularity-with-niaga.html
Marquard S (2018) What the Sparda Bank learns from Silicon Valley. https://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.digitalisierung-in-der-bankenwelt-wie-die-sparda-bank-selbst-kunden-in-malaysia-hilft.0a532acf-fc61-40a0-9c70-34db83e0f7b8.html
Sparda-Bank (2020) We are pioneers in climate protection. https://www.sparda-m.de/genossenschaftsbank-umwelt-und-klimaschutz
UNFCC (2020) What is the Kyoto protocol? https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol
Sparda-Bank (2020) Transparency in own investments. https://www.sparda-m.de/gemeinwohl-oekonomie-eigenanlagen/#innernav
Gilbert JC (2018) Are B corps an elite charade for changing the world? https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaycoengilbert/2018/08/30/are-b-corps-an-elite-charade-for-changing-the-world-part-1/#67395ea97151
Stiglitz JE (2018) Review of the book “winners take all: The elite charade of changing the world”. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/books/review/ winners-take-all-anand-giridharadas.html
Eckstein J, Buck J (2020) Company-wide agility with beyond budgeting, open space & sociocracy: survive & thrive on disruption. Jutta Eckstein, Braunschweig
Transparency International. https://www.transparency.org
United Nations Global Compact. https://www.unglobalcompact.org
Fair Labor Association. https://www.fairlabor.org
The Climate Group. https://www.theclimategroup.org
Becker C, Chitchyan R, Duboc L, Easterbrook S, Mahaux M, Penzenstadler B, Rodríguez-Navas G, Salinesi C, Seyff N, Venters CC, Calero C, Koçak SA, Betz S (2014) The karlskrona manifesto for sustainability design. CoRR
Acknowledgments
We want to thank the members of the Supporting Agile Adoption initiative of the Agile Alliance for their contributions and inspirations to our work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Eckstein, J., de O. Melo, C. (2021). Sustainability: Delivering Agility’s Promise. In: Calero, C., Moraga, M.Á., Piattini, M. (eds) Software Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69970-3_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69970-3_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-69969-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-69970-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)