Resumen:
—[Context and Motivation] In the last years,
software engineering researchers have contributed to
defining the notion of sustainability-aware software as
a quality requirement. [Question/problem] The field is,
however, still missing instruments supporting the design
and assessment of software sustainability.
[Objective] This research aims at providing a validated
Sustainability Assessment Framework (SAF) through a
long-term empirical study in close-collaboration with the
software industry. [Methodology] By using the participatory technical action-research method, we validate the
sustainability-quality model, one of the instruments of the
SAF framework, by means of investigating its applicability
in an industrial software project and detecting potential
improvements.
[Results] Our results confirm the effective applicability of
our model as most of its quality attributes (QAs) have been
either addressed in the software project or acknowledged
as relevant. The action-research method was also very
useful for enriching our model by identifying QAs missing
in the model (e.g. regulation compliance, data privacy).
[Contribution] The sustainability-quality model can
be effectively used as an instrument for identifying
sustainability-quality requirements, and creating awareness on the relevance of the multidimensional sustainability nature of certain quality attributes.
