A classification approach of sustainability aware requirements methods

Abstract

Sustainability concept is interpreted in different ways within and among disciplines. Thus, software developers must be aware of the extent to which methods used in requirements engineering are supporting this issue. So, this paper aims to classify methods used to develop or manage environmental sustainability (green) requirements as regards three categories: the sustainability notions they rely on, sustainability software view, and sustainability requirements view. The classification approach was validated with 16 papers selected by a Systematic Mapping Study method. As a result, it was found that the reviewed papers focused on sustainability goals related to second order effects and the case studies addressed mainly early requirements during development stage of the software life cycle. Few papers reported requirements validation practices. In a nutshell, the classification approach allowed to identify that requirements engineering methods should consider others sustainability notions and to provide methodological support to derive software requirements from sustainability goals.