Using Sustainability Impact Scores for Software Architecture Evaluation

TL;DR

This paper introduces an improved Sustainability Impact Score (SIS) to evaluate and quantify sustainability impacts and trade-offs at the software architecture level, aiding organizations in making informed, sustainable decisions.

Contribution

It presents an enhanced SIS framework that quantifies sustainability impacts of software architecture trade-offs, addressing a gap in holistic evaluation methods.

Findings

Technical quality concerns significantly impact sustainability dimensions.

The SIS helps identify unrecognized sustainability impacts.

Early evaluations enable organizations to mitigate sustainability risks.

Abstract

For future regulatory compliance, organizations must assess and report on the state of sustainability in terms of its impacts over time. Sustainability, being a multidimensional concern, is complex to quantify. This complexity further increases with the interdependencies of the quality concerns across different sustainability dimensions. The research literature lacks a holistic way to evaluate sustainability at the software architecture level. With this study, our aim is to identify quality attribute (QA) trade-offs at the software architecture level and quantify the related sustainability impact. To this aim we present an improved version of the Sustainability Impact Score (SIS), building on our previous work. The SIS facilitates the identification and quantification of trade-offs in terms of their sustainability impact, leveraging a risk- and importance-based prioritization mechanism. To evaluate our approach, we apply it to an industrial case study involving a multi-model framework for integrated decision-making in the energy sector. Our study reveals that technical quality concerns have significant, often unrecognized impacts across sustainability dimensions. The SIS coupled with QA trade-offs can help practitioners make informed decisions that align with their sustainability goals. Early evaluations can help organizations mitigate sustainability risks by taking preventive actions.