Sustainability in software engineering: a systematic literature review

• Published in: 16th International Conference on Evaluation & Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2012) pp. 32 - 41
• Main Authors: Penzenstadler, B, Bauer, V, Calero, C, Franch, X
• Format: Conference Proceeding Publication
• Language: English
• Published: Stevenage, UK IET 2012; The Institution of Engineering & Technology; The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
• Subjects: Active area; Body of knowledge; Enginyeria del programari; Enginyeria del software; Enginyeria sostenible; Informàtica; Investigació; Literature reviews; Research activities; Research questions; Search queries; Software engineering; Software engineering techniques; Software management; Sustainable engineering; Systematic literature review; Àrees temàtiques de la UPC; research activity; database; journal; classified publication; workshop search; SLR; software engineering; search query; research coverage; sustainability; systematic literature review
• ISBN: 1849195412; 9781849195416
• DOI: 10.1049/ic.2012.0004

Background: Supporting sustainability in software engineering is becoming an active area of research. We want to contribute the first Systematic Literature Review(SLR) in this field to aid researchers who are motivated to contribute to that topic by providing a body of knowledge as starting point, because we know from own experience, this search can be tedious and time consuming. Aim: We aim to provide an overview of different aspects of sustainability in software engineering research with regard to research activity, investigated topics, identified limitations, proposed approaches, used methods, available studies, and considered domains. Method: The applied method is a SLR in five reliable and commonly-used databases according to the (quasi-standard) protocol by Kitchenham et al. [1]. We assessed the 100 first results of each database ordered by relevance with respect to the search query. Results: Of 500 classified publications, we regard 96 as relevant for our research questions. We sketch a taxonomy of their topics and domains, and provide lists of used methods and proposed approaches. Most of the excluded publications were ruled out because of an unfitting usage of terms within the search query. Conclusions: Currently, there is little research coverage on the different aspects of sustainability in software engineering while other disciplines are already more active. Future work includes extending the study by reviewing a higher number of publications, including dedicated journal and workshop searches, and snowballing.