Agile Sustainability
by Jutta Eckstein, Steve Holyer, Claudia MeloSustainability is not just a critical part of improving the health of our planet, it’s increasingly
becoming an essential success factor for every company looking to thrive in today’s VUCA environment.
Operating in a sustainable manner helps organizations make a lasting impact on the ecosystem, find, and keep
clients, as well as attract talent.
Jutta Eckstein, Steve Holyer, and Claudia Melo have developed this unique assessment to help organizations
gauge the environmental, social, and economic footprint of their products and services.
By leveraging the results of this validated assessment, organizations can better understand how to operate in a more sustainable manner and contribute to increasing sustainability across the industry.
Key Elements of Sustainability
The assessment is inspired by the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 that aims for 17 sustainable development goals and three pillars of sustainability — aiming for equity, health, and livability (social), protecting the planet (environmental), and improving the lives & prospects of everyone, everywhere (economic).
Agile and Sustainability—A Natural Fit
The relationship and impact that the agile software development approach has on the sustainability dimensions and the idea of embracing a more humane approach to work are evident. Issues such as resources and energy consumption both from process and product perspectives are relevant.
Critical Conversations
The analysis increases awareness and recognizes that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth—all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
Sustainability is a Natural Part of Agile Ways of Working
The 17 SDGs are integrated—they recognize that action in one area will affect outcomes in others, and that development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability. The creativity, knowhow, technology and financial resources from all of society is necessary to achieve the SDGs in every context. Comparative Sustainability is one small way that our teams, programs and organizations can create awareness and help contribute to these goals.
”A blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all people and the world by 2030.”
- Global Goals Mission Statement
Sample Survey Items
Our organization learns continuously from society to make the world a better place.
The team knows which features are really used by its customers.
Our growth targets do not result in us compromising our values.
The product is designed to have a long life cycle without serious negatives occurring.
We prioritize the planet as one of the stakeholders.
The team monitors the carbon footprint of the system.
The team knows about and requests feedback on the metrics that drive the customer’s business.
The product is efficient with resource utilization both when in-use as well as while idle.
Our sustainability actions align with our marketing.
Sample Survey Items
Our organization learns continuously from society to make the world a better place.
The team knows which features are really used by its customers.
Our growth targets do not result in us compromising our values.
Top Features
Create awareness at all levels of the organization and understand how the products/services we produce affect our planet and the 17 Global Goals.
Leverage the insights to drive an intentional strategy of sustainable agile ways of working across the organization.
Gain insights expeditiously - perform analysis at the team, program and organizational levels.
Benchmark the level of Sustainability across your teams and organization against other organizations in your industry.
Create awareness at all levels of the organization and understand how the products/services we produce affect our planet and the 17 Global Goals.
Leverage the insights to drive an intentional strategy of sustainable agile ways of working across the organization.
Gain insights expeditiously - perform analysis at the team, program and organizational levels.
Benchmark the level of Sustainability across your teams and organization against other organizations in your industry.
Jucka Eckstein
Steve Holyer
Dr. Claudia Melo
Jutta Eckstein (https://www.jeckstein.com/)
works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She is trained as a pollution control commissioner
on ecological environmentalism. Jutta has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an Agile
transition. She has a unique experience in applying Agile processes within medium-sized to large distributed
mission-critical projects.
Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book entitled 'Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting,
Open Space & Sociocracy' (dubbed BOSSA nova). Besides that, she has published her experience in her
books 'Agile Software Development in the Large', 'Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams',
'Retrospectives for Organizational Change', and together with Johanna Rothman 'Diving for Hidden Treasures:
Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio'.
Steve Holyer is an experienced trainer, coach, facilitator and consultant helping organizations unleash
value and deliver results. He is also a frequent international speaker and a thought-leader on Scrum and
Agile software development. He serves as advocate and mentor for companies, leaders and change agents looking
for a better way of working using Agile practices in a productive, fulfilling, and fun way.
Steve learned his craft serving as a Scrum Master with multiple teams and organizations, so he knows how to
change an organization from the inside. From international Swiss business to emerging markets in South Africa,
Steve understands and shows how to apply Scrum and Agile principles in specific cultural contexts. Since 2000,
he has been based in Zurich, Switzerland.
Claudia Melo is a technology leader building high-performing agile teams, taking big ideas and bringing them
to life, and helping teams successfully navigate through change and innovation. She brings over twenty years of global
experience in developing new digital solutions, digital transformation, consulting, technology/business strategy,
evidence-based research & working with senior leadership executives. She was previously Director at Loft, Enterprise
Agile Coach with the United Nations in Vienna, and ThoughtWorks’ CTO for Latin America, where she also played a Global
Head of Tech Learning Development role. Since 2016, she has been working on ICT for Sustainability, aligned to the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Claudia received her Ph.D. in Computer Science (Agile Team Productivity) from the University of São Paulo (USP), in
collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She is passionate about community
building and impact, contributing through volunteering, public speaking, teaching, mentorship, research, books, and
industry reports in Latin America, Europe, US, and Scandinavia. In 2015, she received the USP Outstanding Thesis Award and,
in 2016, cited as "Mulheres Inspiradoras" by ThingOlga in Brazil. She is also an advisory board member in Computer Science for Insper.
Agile Sustainability by Jutta Eckstein, Steve Holyer, and Claudia Melo s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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