Sustainability Debt: A Metaphor to Support Sustainability Design Decisions

Stefanie Betz; Christoph Becker; Ruzanna Chitchyan; Leticia Duboc; Steve M. Easterbrook; Birgit Penzenstadler; Norbert Seyff; Colin C. Venters

Sustainability Debt: A Metaphor to Support Sustainability Design Decisions

Stefanie Betz, Christoph Becker, Ruzanna Chitchyan, Leticia Duboc, Steve M. Easterbrook, Birgit Penzenstadler, Norbert Seyff, Colin C. Venters

Research output: Contribution to journal › Conference article › peer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Sustainability, the capacity to endure, is fundamental for the societies on our planet. Despite its increasing recognition in software engineering, it remains difficult to assess the delayed systemic effects of decisions taken in requirements engineering and systems design. To support this difficult task, this paper introduces the concept of sustainability debt. The metaphor helps in the discovery, documentation, and communication of sustainability issues in requirements engineering. We build on the existing metaphor of technical debt and extend it to four other dimensions of sustainability to help think about sustainabilityaware software systems engineering. We highlight the meaning of debt in each dimension and the relationships between those dimensions. Finally, we discuss the use of the metaphor and explore how it can help us to design sustainability-aware software

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	55-63
Number of pages	9
Journal	CEUR Workshop Proceedings
Volume	1416
Publication status	Published - 24 Aug 2015
Event	4th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Sustainable Systems co-located with the 23rd IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference - Ottawa, Canada Duration: 24 Aug 2015 → 24 Aug 2015 Conference number: 4 / 23

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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1416/Session2Paper4.pdfLicence: Unspecified

Cite this

@article{747fa6029ef240a4a0ebbeef405be2aa,

title = "Sustainability Debt: A Metaphor to Support Sustainability Design Decisions",

abstract = "Sustainability, the capacity to endure, is fundamental for the societies on our planet. Despite its increasing recognition in software engineering, it remains difficult to assess the delayed systemic effects of decisions taken in requirements engineering and systems design. To support this difficult task, this paper introduces the concept of sustainability debt. The metaphor helps in the discovery, documentation, and communication of sustainability issues in requirements engineering. We build on the existing metaphor of technical debt and extend it to four other dimensions of sustainability to help think about sustainabilityaware software systems engineering. We highlight the meaning of debt in each dimension and the relationships between those dimensions. Finally, we discuss the use of the metaphor and explore how it can help us to design sustainability-aware software",

keywords = "Debt, Design decisions, Metaphor, Requirements, Sustainability",

author = "Stefanie Betz and Christoph Becker and Ruzanna Chitchyan and Leticia Duboc and Easterbrook, \{Steve M.\} and Birgit Penzenstadler and Norbert Seyff and Venters, \{Colin C.\}",

year = "2015",

month = aug,

day = "24",

language = "English",

volume = "1416",

pages = "55--63",

journal = "CEUR Workshop Proceedings",

issn = "1613-0073",

publisher = "CEUR-WS",

note = "4th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Sustainable Systems co-located with the 23rd IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference, RE 2015 ; Conference date: 24-08-2015 Through 24-08-2015",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Sustainability Debt

T2 - 4th International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Sustainable Systems co-located with the 23rd IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference

AU - Betz, Stefanie

AU - Becker, Christoph

AU - Chitchyan, Ruzanna

AU - Duboc, Leticia

AU - Easterbrook, Steve M.

AU - Penzenstadler, Birgit

AU - Seyff, Norbert

AU - Venters, Colin C.

N1 - Conference code: 4 / 23

PY - 2015/8/24

Y1 - 2015/8/24

N2 - Sustainability, the capacity to endure, is fundamental for the societies on our planet. Despite its increasing recognition in software engineering, it remains difficult to assess the delayed systemic effects of decisions taken in requirements engineering and systems design. To support this difficult task, this paper introduces the concept of sustainability debt. The metaphor helps in the discovery, documentation, and communication of sustainability issues in requirements engineering. We build on the existing metaphor of technical debt and extend it to four other dimensions of sustainability to help think about sustainabilityaware software systems engineering. We highlight the meaning of debt in each dimension and the relationships between those dimensions. Finally, we discuss the use of the metaphor and explore how it can help us to design sustainability-aware software

AB - Sustainability, the capacity to endure, is fundamental for the societies on our planet. Despite its increasing recognition in software engineering, it remains difficult to assess the delayed systemic effects of decisions taken in requirements engineering and systems design. To support this difficult task, this paper introduces the concept of sustainability debt. The metaphor helps in the discovery, documentation, and communication of sustainability issues in requirements engineering. We build on the existing metaphor of technical debt and extend it to four other dimensions of sustainability to help think about sustainabilityaware software systems engineering. We highlight the meaning of debt in each dimension and the relationships between those dimensions. Finally, we discuss the use of the metaphor and explore how it can help us to design sustainability-aware software

KW - Debt

KW - Design decisions

KW - Metaphor

KW - Requirements

KW - Sustainability

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84940063355

UR - https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1416/

M3 - Conference article

AN - SCOPUS:84940063355

SN - 1613-0073

VL - 1416

SP - 55

EP - 63

JO - CEUR Workshop Proceedings

JF - CEUR Workshop Proceedings

Y2 - 24 August 2015 through 24 August 2015

ER -

Sustainability Debt: A Metaphor to Support Sustainability Design Decisions

Abstract

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Software Sustainability: Research and Practice from a Software Architecture Viewpoint

Software Engineering the Future

Cite this

Sustainability Debt: A Metaphor to Support Sustainability Design Decisions

Abstract

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Research output

Software Sustainability: Research and Practice from a Software Architecture Viewpoint

Activities

Software Engineering the Future

Cite this