Sustainability Profiling of Long-living Software Systems

This paper introduces a framework for software sustainability profiling. The goal of the framework is to analyse sustainability requirements for long-living software systems, focusing on usability and readability of the sustainability profiles. To achieve this goal, we apply a quantitate approach such as fuzzy rating scale-based questionnaires to rank the sustainability requirements, and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to analyse the results of questionnaires and to provide a basis for system profiling. The core profiling elements provided by our framework are (1) a sustainability five-star rating, (2) visualisation of the five sustainability dimensions as a pentagon graph detailing combination for individual, social, technical, economic and environmental dimensions, and (3) a bar graph of overall sustainability level for each requirement. To ensure sustainability, the proposed profiling framework covers the five dimensions of sustainability to quantify the sustainability of any software system not only during the requirement gathering phase but also during maintenance phase of software system lifecycle.