Requirements: The Key to Sustainability

Successful collaborations to integrate sustainability concerns into established practices can significantly and positively influence the long-term effects of the systems. Designers must identify and tackle causes of unsustainable software design. For this, industry can invite academics to research, analyze, and reengineer their current development processes and practices for improved sustainability. They must develop exemplar case studies that demonstrate the benefits of sustainability design in software engineering. For this, early adopter industrial collaborators can partner with academics to apply research findings. Finally, they must build competences in the theory and practice of sustainable design into the training of all software engineers. Industry can make the demand for software practitioners trained in sustainability principles explicit by requiring specific competences from potential employees. Researchers and educators should develop improved curricula that incorporate sustainability principles and ensure that future software professionals possess the competences needed to advance sustainability goals through software engineering.