=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2223/paper2
|storemode=property
|title=Towards Tool-Support for Sustainability Profiling
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2223/paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-2223
|authors=Ahmed Alharti,Maria Spichkova,Margaret Hamilton
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/re/AlhartiSH18
}}
==Towards Tool-Support for Sustainability Profiling==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2223/paper2.pdf
Towards Tool-support for Sustainability Profiling
Ahmed D. Alharthi, Maria Spichkova and Margaret Hamilton
School of Science, RMIT University,
Melbourne, Australia
Email: {ahmed.alharthi, maria.spichkova, margaret.hamilton}@rmit.edu.au
Abstract—The demand for sustainable software is increasing, rating the requirements of a real-life project with sustainability
as the understanding of the importance of sustainability aspects dimensions to analyse the overall sustainability of the system.
is developing in the software engineering community. The most This would provide researchers with insights into SuSoftPro,
effective decisions related to sustainability of software can be
made in the early stages of software development. To support and allow requirements engineers to explore how to take into
these decisions, we introduce Sustainability Profiling for Software account sustainability aspects and how to determine which
(SuSoftPro) tool that can assist in analysing sustainability require- software requirements should be implemented to maximise
ments. In this paper, we analyse the core features of SuSoftPro positive and to minimise negative impacts of the long-living
in comparison with two other approaches, which utilise Multi- software.
Criteria Decision Analysis. We also present a case study we
conducted using SuSoftPro: analysis of sustainability aspects of In our previous work, we introduced a methodology with
a Skin Cancer Information System. supported tool to analyse sustainability requirements for long-
I. I NTRODUCTION living software systems [3]. This methodology provides a
software sustainability profiling that involves a Fuzzy Rating
The impact of software systems on social and economic Scale (FRS, cf. [4]), and uses the Technique for Order
activities increases each year, which makes the analysis of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS, cf. [5]).
sustainability requirements of the software systems more and Our new tool presents sustainability as a five-star rating label, a
more important. Becker et al. [1] highlighted the point that visualisation for the degree of the five sustainability dimensions,
software systems are a major driver of social and economic and a bar graph which illustrates the overall sustainability
activity, which demands a paradigm shift in the software level for each requirement. The tool enables requirements
engineering mind-set to take sustainability into account. The engineers to defining stakeholder groups allotted to one or more
key point for this is in requirements engineering activities, of the five sustainability dimensions, building a fuzzy rating
which should consider sustainability design principles. scale-questionnaire with regard to a sustainability dimension,
Requirements engineers still have a narrow understanding of specifying the high-level requirements and assign them to
sustainability; they focus on one or two dimensions of sustain- created groups, assigning stakeholders and allow them to rating
ability such as environmental and economic sustainability, or on requirements, analysing sustainability, and generating software
the non-functional requirements for technical sustainability such sustainability profiling [6]. We discussed the core steps of
as maintainability and reusability requirements. Requirements the SuSoftPro process in [6] to answer "What is SuSoftPro?".
engineers should take into account sustainability requirements, While this work is to answer: What are the differences between
which implies additional analysis in the early stages of software SuSoftPro and RE approaches using MCDA in sustainability
development to maximise the positive impact and to minimise context? and How can SuSoftPro be applied?
the negative impact of all sustainability dimensions. To support
these activities a tool is required. Contributions: In this paper, we analyse the core features of
The tool has to be easy-to-use and allow involvement of SuSoftPro (abbreviated from Sustainable Software Profiling) in
stakeholders from diverse groups in the process of software comparison with two approaches which employ Multi-Criteria
development, as empowering more participants with a diversity Decision Analysis (MCDA) in requirements engineering. We
of perspectives leads to more sustainable systems [2]. consider a case study of a Skin Cancer Information System
There are many requirements engineering (RE) tools to elicit, (SCIS), which is a clinical software to store patient health
analyse, model, trace, document, manage, as well as verify records, to optimise SuSoftPro and to increase its usability.
and validate software requirements. Some of these tools are Outline: The rest of this paper is organised as follows.
web-based, which allows collaborative access to resources. In Section II, we analyse and evaluate the core features of
However, none of them has the ability to analyse sustainability SuSoftPro by comparing against two RE approaches which a
requirements by involving stakeholders. Thus, the goal of our different methodology using MCDA. Section III illustrates the
ongoing work is to evaluate Sustainability Profiling for Software work flow using a case study from the eHealth domain. Further
(SuSoftPro) for analysis of sustainability requirements. More discussion of the SuSoftPro features is presented in Section IV.
precisely, we are aiming to analyse the SuSoftPro method in- Section V covers related works. Finally, Section VI summarises
depth and evaluate the tool-support through comparison and the paper and outlines the directions of our future work.
Copyright held by the author(s).
TABLE I
C OMPARISONS OF E MPLOYING M ULTI -C RITERIA D ECISION A NALYSIS IN R EQUIREMENTS E NGINEERING D OMAIN
Examines Criteria sureCM [5] ReproTizer [7] SuSoftPro
Framework focus Requirement analysis: resolve conflict Requirement analysis: prioritisation Requirement analysis: sustainability
Collection method Various methods Online questionnaire Online questionnaire
“natural numbers” “natural numbers” “rational numbers”
Weight scale (several scales are used) (scale from 1 to 5) (fuzzy rating scale)
Analysis method TOPSIS WADM TOPSIS
Participants Some stakeholders All stakeholders All stakeholders
Rank update Not defined Yes Yes
Tool support No Yes Yes
Manual computations involved Yes No No
1st round: Five criteria, and
Number of criteria for analysis Two criteria Multi-criteria 2nd round: Multi-criteria
II. C OMPARATIVE EVALUATION assign this group to one or more of the five sustainability
To analyse and evaluate our methodology and the SuSoftPro dimensions, so the group will be allotted to stakeholders
tool, we compared the SuSoftPro against two approaches and requirements;
that developed a methodology using MCDA and used for • Define questions: that will be generated automatically as
requirements engineering domain. Below, we address the five instructions with regard to a sustainability dimension
procedure, analysis, and result of the comparative evaluation. for FRS questionnaire;
• Define requirements: via the specifications of the high-
A. Procedure level requirements and allotting them to related groups
To perform comparative evaluation against SuSoftPro, we affected stakeholders and requirement ownership;
defined three criteria for selecting frameworks from literature • Assign stakeholders: to related groups based on stakehold-
studies as follow: ers' role in the system and their areas of expertise after
• Scope: Developed for requirements engineering context, defining them;
• Process: Involved MCDA and stakeholders, and • Rate requirements: through enable stakeholders to use
• Objective: Analysed sustainability. ratio quantity approach as FRS responses;
Because there was no study meet the three criteria, we • Analyse sustainability: with MCDA using TOPSIS ap-
removed the objective criteria (analysing sustainability) because proach to determine the level of sustainability dimensions
no MCDA technique has been used to analyse sustainability and sustainability requirements measurements; and
within RE as well as sustainability is a new growing topic in • Generate software sustainability profiling: including a
RE. Thus, only two frameworks were found: ReproTizer and five-star sustainability rating label, visualisation of sus-
sureCM. tainability dimension levels, and bar-chart graph for each
Then, we specified 9 sub-criteria to analyse the three sustainability requirements level.
frameworks (SuSoftPro, ReproTizer and sureCM) including Sustainability profiling provides insight and identifies the
the purpose of the methodology, collection method, weight predictability of sustainability to enable requirements engineers
scale, analysis method which is one type of the MCDA, and stakeholders to analyse and break true requirements-
participant, rank updates that the methodology can instantly dependencies, and the interaction and overlapping of sustain-
re-compute results, supported tool, computational complex- ability dimensions by predicting the outcome value before
ity, error-proneness, prevent imprecision inherent in human developing software systems.
responses, number of criteria. 2) ReproTizer: ReproTizer was elaborated by Achimugu
B. Analysis of selected studies et al. [7]. It allows requirements prioritisation via capturing
stakeholders' requirement ranks through numeric weight scale
We analysed SuSoftPro’s core process and features with that are valued between 1 and 5, the prioritised requirements
regard to two other frameworks for requirement analysis: are then analysed using a Weighted Average Decision Matrix
ReproTizer and sureCM. (WADM). ReproTizer framework has five steps as following:
1) SuSoftPro: SuSoftPro1 is a methodology and tool-support
to analyse sustainability requirements within sustainability • Define requirements Requirements engineers specify re-
dimensions having individual, social, economic and environ- quirements list;
mental dimensions. The general idea of the SuSoftPro process • Add stakeholder: Requirements engineers add stakeholder
is presented in Figure 1 and discussed in [3], [6]. There are 7 and assign them to requirements;
core steps allow requirements engineers to: • Score requirements: Stakeholders score each requirements
• Define stakeholder groups: through creating stakeholder
using a Likert scale from 1 to 5;
• Compute requirements prioritisation: Requirements priori-
group based on stakeholders' role or expert, and then
tisation automatically are determined using WADM, after
1 Link of the tool-support: https://www.SuSoftPro.ahmedalharthi.net scoring requirements by stakeholders; and
Artifact exports from
requirements projects Artifact imports to
Social Technical
Requirements management dimension dimension requirements projects
Individual
Assigning dimension
Creating or editing
requirement to Economic Environmental
Requirements requirement details dimension dimension
group
list
Sustainability questionnaire
Creating & assigning group to one
or more sustainability dimensions Analysing responses
using Technique for
Order of Preference
Stakeholders management Rating requirements
by Similarity to Ideal
Stakeholder using the fuzzy rating
Solution (TOPSIS) Software
list Assigning scalequestionnaire
Creating or editing Sustainability
stakeholder
stakeholder details Profiling
to group
Fig. 1. SuSoftPro: Process Model
• Generate requirements prioritisation list: Weight of each III. C ASE S TUDY
requirement prioritisation is presented in ordered list.
To illustrate how SuSoftPro can be applied, we used a case
3) sureCM: sureCM was introduced by Mairiza et al. [5], study from the eHealth domain, based on a real-life project,
focusing on resolving non-functional requirements (NFR) such a Skin Cancer Information System (SCIS), cf. [8]. SCIS is a
as security-usability conflicts. Like SuSoftPro, it also applies web-based software system to register the diagnoses of skin
the TOPSIS method to analyse the collected data, but unlike cancer along with the treatments. SCIS has five stakeholder
SuSoftPro the sureCM framework does not have any tool roles:
support. sureCM framework has four steps including: 1) Physicians,
• Identify NFRs conflict: via conflict relationship digram, 2) Nurses,
requirements engineers need to identify if NFRs have 3) Receptionists,
conflict; 4) Administrators and Managers, and
• Rank characterize conflict: through recognising parameters 5) Developers and IT Support.
of alternative functionality, metrics, or measures;
• Analysing solution: via TOPSIS the best alternative A. Defining Stakeholder Groups
solution and the worst solution are calculated; and Requirements engineers have selected 14 stakeholders (two
• Present selected solution: Alternative solutions list is physicians, two nurses, four receptionists, three administrators
presented from the highest to the lowest rank. and managers, and three developers and IT supports). Five
groups (corresponding to the stakeholder roles) are created and
C. Result assigned to sustainability dimensions, cf. Table II. Groups are
used not only to group stakeholders with related sustainability
As shown in Table I, both SuSoftPro and ReproTizer work dimensions but also to associate requirements with related
with more than two criteria for analysis, and are supported stakeholder groups. For instance, nurse group is assigned to
by a tool, providing a fully systematic computation to prevent individual and social sustainability dimensions as well as each
errors. The sureCM framework is based on a semi-automatic requirements affecting or related to nurses are assigned to nurse
computation and data collection (requirements rating), which group.
are more error-proneness than a fully automated solution.
Another advantage of SuSoftPro is utilising the FRS, which B. Defining Questions
allows better precision of requirements' rating. Although the SuSoftPro generates questions/instructions according to the
FRS application provides more accurate scale than Likert scale following format:
to capture real-valued responses, the FRS is not fully friendly-
to-use scale [4]. With minor orientation and guidances will be “Rate the influence of the requirement on the X sustainability”,
enough to use the FRS for responding.
Neither ReproTizer nor sureCM support the sustainability where X is replaced in a concrete case by the corresponding sus-
context whereas SuSoftPro supports and utilises a fully sys- tainability dimension: individual, social, technical, economic,
tematic and comprehensive discovery methodology to analyse and environmental. There is an option to adjust each question,
sustainability requirements. but we decided to continue with the generated questions for
The core results of the comparison are summarised in Table I. our case.
TABLE II
A SSIGNED S USTAINABILITY D IMENSIONS TO S TAKEHOLDER G ROUPS
Sustainability Dimensions
Group
Individual Social Technical Economic Environmental
Physician X X X
Nurse X X
Receptionist X X X
Administrator & Manager X X X X
Developer & IT Support X X X X
C. Defining Requirements
A 23 high-level requirements specification of the system
in [8] are imported from a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file
and assigned to related groups, cf. Table III. Each requirement
is assigned to one or more groups only when the requirement
will impact or belong to the associated stakeholders in the
group. For example, Req. 2 "Create a new record" is allocated
to the physician, nurse, and developer and IT support groups
because they will utilise this requirement and it may affect
them.
D. Assigning Stakeholders
The user profiles for the stakeholders are created and then
assigned to the groups, as shown in Figure 2. Therefore,
each group is assigned to related sustainability dimensions,
requirements and stakeholders. In other word, stakeholders are
grouped and designated to related sustainability dimensions and
requirements. Adjusting stakeholder details are automatically
prevented when stakeholders start responding to the question-
naire. For example, a nurse begins answering the questionnaire,
the change of the group and other related details are frozen.
Fig. 3. SuSoftPro: An example of rating one requirement's impact on individual
sustainability
E. Rating Requirements
After building the questionnaire, generating and sending auto-
sign-in link to the stakeholders to access the questionnaire, the
status of all the stakeholders in the project becomes waiting,
until they begin to respond to the questionnaire. For each
high-level requirement to be rated, the stakeholder can rate
its influence on the sustainability dimensions using interface
presented on Figure 3. In SCIS case to illustrate the flexibility
of the tool, nurses have 30 questions to answer, where
• 15 questions are on the individual sustainability perspec-
tive for the 15 allotted requirements to physician and nurse
group in the SCIS, and
• 15 questions for the social perspective of the same
requirements.
Physicians have 45 questions:
Fig. 2. SuSoftPro: Stakeholder Management (example, the names and the • 30 questions are the same as for the nurse group,
email addresses are blacked-out) • additional 10 questions on the economic perspective of
the same requirements.
TABLE III
SCIS R EQUIREMENTS WITH S USTAINABILITY R ATING W HERE 1 IS THE H IGHEST AND 0 THE L OWEST P OSSIBLE R ATING
# Requirement Name Description Assigned Group Sustainability
1 Login system The SCIS shall provide system access having suitable security services. This Physician 0.618686
access will have various levels that depend on user authorization. Nurse
Receptionist
Administrator and Manager
Developer and IT Support
2 Create new record The SCIS shall provide physicians and nurses with the ability to create a new Physician 0.495698
record for patients for the first time. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
3 Create new problems The SCIS shall provide physicians and nurses with the ability to create a Physician 0.611013
problem in a patients’ record. When patients have a problem, the problem will Nurse
be described and diagnosed. Developer and IT Support
4 Create visit The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to record each visit that may have Physician 0.55784
various problems and different procedures. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
5 Edit record The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to edit records by updating or Physician 0.542436
adding more information. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
6 Insert procedure The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to select appropriate procedures Physician 0.410874
for one problem or more than one. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
7 Finalise procedure The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to complete record and finalise Physician 0.613918
the procedure. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
8 Access patients' record The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to view record and previous Physician 0.473612
problems with their procedures and any previous history that was recorded. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
9 Allocate pathology report to The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to allocate any pathology report Physician 0.406329
procedure to its procedure in a patients’ record. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
10 Upload documents and image The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to upload documents and images Physician 0.489118
to a patients’ record. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
11 Generate and print form The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to generate forms such as, taking Physician 0.432951
a test and printing it. Nurse
Developer and IT Support
12 Generate bill The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to generate bills and print them. Receptionist 0.525928
Administrator and Manager
Developer and IT Support
13 Hold or un-hold bill The SCIS shall enable physicians and nurses to hold bills until the result appear, Physician 0.467628
then un-hold them to continue the process. Receptionist
Administrator and Manager
Developer and IT Support
14 Print bill The SCIS shall enable physicians, nurses and receptionist to print bills. Nurse 0.418866
Receptionist
Administrator and Manager
Developer and IT Support
15 Create patients’ information The SCIS shall enable physicians, nurses and receptionist to create patients’ Physician 0.638787
information. Nurse
Receptionist
Administrator and Manager
Developer and IT Support
16 Edit patients' details The SCIS shall enable physicians, nurses and receptionist to update patients’ Physician 0.624384
information. Nurse
Receptionist
Administrator and Manager
Developer and IT Support
17 Search feature The SCIS shall enable all users who have authorisation to look at different Physician 0.49455
information via a search feature, including patient and staff information. Nurse
Receptionist
Administrator and Manager
Developer and IT Support
18 Generate and print Financial The SCIS shall enable administrators and managers to print various reports. Administrator and Manager 0.565542
and business reports Developer and IT Support
19 Generate and print Financial The SCIS shall enable administrators and managers to print various reports. Administrator and Manager 0.487618
and business reports Developer and IT Support
20 Create new staff account The SCIS shall enable administrators and managers to create new staff account Administrator and Manager 0.5329
and enter their details. Developer and IT Support
21 Edit staff's details The SCIS shall enable administrators and managers to update staff details. Administrator and Manager 0.532949
Developer and IT Support
22 Administrator Manage role The SCIS shall enable administrators to locate staff authorization Administrator and Manager 0.552101
Developer and IT Support
23 Create centre’s information The shall enable administrators to establish the centre’s information and entering Administrator and Manager 0.430374
important details such as connecting details. Developer and IT Support
There are 24 questions covering the individual, social, and and IT people have 92 questions for all the requirements
economic perspective for requirements related to receptionists. covering 23 questions on each individual, technical, economic,
Administrators and managers are assigned 52 questions to and environmental sustainability perspective, see Table III.
answer for administration and managements requirements cov-
ering the following perspectives (13 questions each): economic, Guidance on how to use the FRS is provided for stakeholders,
technical, social, and environmental perspectives. Developers so stakeholders such as nurses or physicians, who have not seen
or used the FRS before, will be easily guided. They also had
the ability to save their responses and return back to continue. • Only the individual dimension is in a satisfactory range
An option for skipping any question for certain requirements which is more than 0.60 (the corresponding bar in the
within particular sustainability dimension is implemented. For chart is light green).
example, a physician was asked to rate the influence of • The technical, social and economic dimensions are be-
Req. 6 "Insert procedure" on economic sustainability; the tween 0.54 and 0.58 (the corresponding bars in the chart
physician was able to skip this question. However, the question are yellow).
has a probability to be answered by other stakeholders such • The environmental dimensions is in an unsatisfactory
as other physicians and developers who are assigned to rate range which is around 0.35 (the corresponding bars in
Req. 6, for the economic dimension. the chart are orange).
The sustainability value of each requirement is indicated in
F. Analysing Sustainability Table III. The value in the result is between 0-1 where in the
TOPSIS method 0 represents the worst ideal solution and 1 is
As the next step, SuSoftPro applies the TOPSIS method and
the best ideal solution [9].
creates the sustainability profiling of the system. A systematic
computation of TOPSIS is performed and recalculated when IV. D ISCUSSION
each stakeholder submits their response. Also, rated require- SuSoftPro is an automated solution in the sustainability
ments with its questions are automatically locked when any context to analyse sustainability requirements based on ques-
stakeholder begins to rate it, so engineers can not amend them. tionnaire, in which quantity data gathers via FRS questionnaire
and analyses using TOPSIS. The result presents as sustain-
G. Generating Software Sustainability Profiling ability profiling for software having a five-star rating label,
visualisation of the degree of sustainability dimensions, and
The created profiling presents in the dashboard in Figure 4.
bar graph of overall sustainability level for each requirement.
Based on the simulated responses we used to illustrate the
From the comparative evaluation result, both SuSoftPro and
example (where only 13 out of 14 stakeholders submitted their
ReproTizer approaches are based on individuals perspective.
responses), the overall sustainability of the SCIS has FFF
The perspective is important to change sustainability of software
three-star rating (3 out of 5). The five sustainability dimensions
when users’ opinions are addressed and taken into account.
are presented by a bar chart:
Scholars of social practice theory believed that practices and
perspectives of individuals in the performance of daily tasks
stimulate social, economic and environmental changes [10].
The SuSoftPro tool aggregated all stakeholders' requirements.
This enables the recognition of diverse visions and voices
into decisions that are needed to develop sustainable software.
Thus, the point of sustainability perspective while analysing
requirements could be the main force in providing sustainable
software in the early stages.
Besides, providing FRS in SuSoftPro to capture individ-
uals views was necessary to prevent imprecision. However,
there is the need for reconciling plurality through supporting
stakeholders with the diversity of points of view that ensure
sustainability [2].
As the case study demonstrated, practitioners were supplied
with information related to sustainability aspects. The sus-
tainability profiling presented sustainability scores for each
requirements and sustainability dimensions. These scores will
improve the sustainability attention and allow practitioners
to provide sustainable software. For example, the lowest
sustainability scores in SCIS was Req. 9 "Allocate pathology
report to procedure", so practitioners could give more attention
to improve this requirements and acceptance as well as increase
users satisfaction which lead to sustainability [11].
Additionally, the tool allows requirements engineers to
create groups with regard to stakeholders diversity or role.
For example, groups in SCIS profiling were divided into user
role. Grouping stakeholders and requirements are not only to
reduce the number of questions but also to express their opinion
Fig. 4. The SuSoftPro Dashboard for the SCIS profile about what is related to them. Also, there are two ways to
invite stakeholders either with a public link to accommodate the model covers sustainability dimension and impacts, the
more stakeholders with self-registration or being registered by model is not simple and systematic approach to measure
the engineers. sustainability during software developments and usages. There
Two different colours are provided for practitioners with is limited of stakeholders involving to provide sustainability
colour-deficient vision in the tool. The red colour is replaced perceptions, so this limitation will lead to a lack of sustainability
with blue when the colour-deficient vision is opted. This option perceptions.
ensures better accessibility and equally user experience to read
sustainability profile because one in every 12 people has colour Mahaux [2] suggested that additional analysis activities
vision deficiency [12]. need to have support from participants who are involved
Intuitive design is taken into account during designing the as stakeholders in the process of software developments.
tool. For practitioners, the tool divided into logic sections Hence, involving supported participants will ensure sustainable
including a dashboard, questionnaire, requirements, stakehold- software. This argument emerges the need of a tool involving
ers, and profiling. A systematic computation of stakeholders supported participants easily, and the SuSoftPro is developed
responses after submitting is implemented to prevent error. to involve supported participants vis providing their perspective
Icons and colours also are provided for an effortless under- as support.
standing of the tool. However, stakeholders may face difficulty Al Hinai [15] introduced a number of metrics and an accom-
to understand the FRS when they start to respond [4]). A panying method for analysing social sustainability requirements
guidance with example is developed to accomplish rating and of software systems. The method is not systematic and easy
increase the usability. to elicit the values because of the variety of translating value,
The tool also allow integration with commonly used re- and the potential of conflicting value types.
quirements engineering tools such as ReqMan and Rational
DOORS: Its export and import features allows the exchange Chitchyan et al. [16] presented the results of a qualitative
of requirement specifications using the CSV format. study, which goal was to explore perceptions and attitudes
SuSoftPro has emerged to: towards sustainability, of requirements engineering practitioners.
• Capture more individuals perspective with the diversity
The lack of methodological support was one of the identified
and accurate impression, barriers to the engagement with sustainability design in RE
• Analyse software requirements in sustainability context,
practice. The SuSoftPro is a solution to overcome this barrier
and through engaging practitioners and stakeholders to analyse
• Present the result as a sustainability profiling.
sustainability.
However, a few limitations need to be taken into account. Becker et al. [1] compared two projects to illustrate the
There is need to provide a standards for sustainability five- software development within and without sustainability design,
star rating label to specify the minimum level of sustainability so they stated that requirements engineering is the key to
performance that software should meet before they can be devel- sustainability through following interdisciplinary, stakeholder-
oped. Also, when the number of requirements is increased and focused approach, and systems-oriented as well as supporting
a group has assigned more than two sustainability dimensions, by higher management and executives. Their analysis approach
the number of question will be large either double or treble is to visualise the systems’ potential impacts as immediate,
requirements. This large number could lead to take a long time enabling, and structural impacts within the five sustainability
for responding to a questionnaire, so stakeholders might feel dimensions. While SuSoftPro visualises the sustainability level
more annoying. An initial optimised solution, requirements of software and requirements within the five sustainability
engineers can divide a group that allotted to more than two dimensions. Both practices could assist to understand the sus-
sustainability dimensions into two groups and then assign them tainability of software systems and their impact on sustainability
to one or two different sustainability dimensions. Another aspects.
solution is to leverage machine learning to assign stakeholders
and divide questions between one group. We did optimise the A number of requirements engineering tools with general
number of questions in the tool through establishing a group or specific features for eliciting, analysing, modelling, trac-
and assign stakeholders and requirements to it. This solution ing, documenting, managing, and verifying and validating
assists to reduce the number of questions about 20-50% in requirements [17]. Some of these tools are begin to facilitate
some cases. web-based solution in order to allow collaborative access
to resources, while others particularly dominated tools are
V. R ELATED W ORK becoming more complex and difficult to use. However, none
Some works on embedding sustainability in the software of them has the ability to analyse sustainability requirements
development process, e.g. [13], are focusing on environmental by involving stakeholders with regard to the sustainability
aspects. In SuSoftPro, contrary to them, we cover individual, dimensions. Hence SuSoftPro was developed to enable the
social, economic, technical and environmental dimensions. analysis of sustainability through extensive questionnaires on
Porras et al. [14] proposed a manually model-based analysis requirements which cover the sustainability context of the
to evaluate the ICT projects wrt. sustainability effect. Although software and can include a wide range of stakeholders.
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