A generic model for sustainability with process- and product-specific instances

Motivation: Software systems as we know them often have a economic purpose and/or fulfill human or social needs of their users. The economic purpose is analysed by economy itself; the latter goals are analysed in software engineering by user-centric techniques, such as service orientation. Yet, as software systems have an impact on the environment, environmental sustainability should be supported as a major goal for software development projects. Problem: Without applicable guidance, sustainability remains an untangible ideal. Therefore, we need a definition and a concrete decomposition of sustainability to relate it to software systems development. It is not sufficient to analyse environmental sustainbility on its own, but its interplay with other aspects in order to define appropriate actions and understand their effects. Principal idea: We analyse the dimensions of sustainability, their values with respective indicators, and activities to support them. These elements compose a conceptual model that allows for analysing and constructing actions both for a company or a product point of view. Contribution: We propose a generic sustainability model with instances for companies and projects from various case studies. We thus enable analysis, support and assessment of environmental sustainability in software engineering.