“Keep it simple! Starting with sustainability is that easy.”
(Richard Seidl)
When I look at the software development projects I have come across in recent years through a sustainability lens, I mainly see one thing: little to nothing. At most, sustainability shows up when tools are chosen, in small doses when technology is picked, and by the time process design comes along, it has usually disappeared. Yet agility and sustainability fit together well, as long as we treat sustainability as an agile value.
Can Agile Be Sustainable?
Of course, someone could grumble: “Ha, but if I’m agile, I’m deliberately only looking at the next few weeks (short cycles and all that), so I CAN’T be sustainable!” I think that purely methodical view of agility falls short. For me, agility rests on a set of values, and these days sustainability is one of them!
Fine, so we want to live sustainability in an agile context. But where do we start? We don’t have to look far. Our neighbor Lean, with its focus on eliminating waste, has a great lever in its toolbox!
Keep It Simple, Stupid!
To get more concrete: the motto is to keep things simple. KISS: Keep it simple, stupid! Or, in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
And there’s plenty of room for improvement, isn’t there? Countless redundant meetings. Bloated applications. Implemented features nobody needs. Overloaded development processes.
If we started tidying up here, clearing things out and dropping old habits, we would gradually free up huge amounts of resources. Not only in the teams, but in the infrastructure and the organization as well. Pretty sustainable, right?
Sustainability Takes Courage
But that calls for another agile value: courage. So? Do we actually live it? Maybe a little more of it wouldn’t hurt …
With that in mind, go for it: courageously toward sustainability!
