Exploring the Experiences of Experts: Sustainability in Agile Software Development -- Insights from the Finnish Software Industry

TL;DR

This paper explores how sustainability is integrated into agile software development in Finland, highlighting expert experiences and proposing key elements for the software engineering roadmap 2030.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into sustainability practices in Finnish agile development and suggests practical steps for future integration and education.

Findings

Scrum is the most popular methodology in Finland.

Addressing sustainability dimensions influences each other.

Three key elements for Roadmap 2030 are proposed.

Abstract

Agile software development is gaining popularity among software developers due to its benefits. As the interest in agile software development grows, there is an increasing focus on investigating sustainability within this field. This study aimed to explore sustainability within agile software development in the Finnish software industry and, through gathered experiences, contribute to the software engineering roadmap 2030. Using an interview approach, we conducted an empirical study within the Finnish software industry to achieve this goal. The findings indicate a growing interest among experts in integrating sustainability into agile software development. The results show that the Scrum methodology is the most popular approach in the Finnish software industry, and addressing different sustainability dimensions can have a ripple effect on each other. The study proposes three key elements to be considered in the software engineering roadmap 2030: integrating sustainability into software engineering education, creating sustainability tools and frameworks, and assessing the energy efficiency of libraries used in software development.