This pillar of the maturity model covers ....
Green debt, like technical debt, is all those things that we choose not to do now, but which will negatively impact the solution's carbon efficiency. Tracking this debt ensures we can quantify the impact of potential improvements.
| Measure | Description | Score: 1 | Score: 3 | Score: 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tracking | How do you identify and track green debt? | We don't explicitly track technical debt from a green debt viewpoint. We tend to track technical debt for new decisions going forward. | We identify technical debt both proactively and retroactively and link it to sustainability non-functional requirements. For instance, we analyze how resolving the debt would affect these NFRs and therefore understand the benefits of fixing it. | We identify technical debt both proactively and retroactively and link it to sustainability non-functional requirements. For instance, we analyze how resolving the debt would affect these NFRs. We quantify the likely impact of remediating the debt. |
| Remediation | What are you going to do about it? How do you quantify the impact. | We resolve debt once it starts causing user-impacting problems for the service or becomes an obstacle for change. | Teams are encouraged to adopt a balanced approach. Beyond feature delivery, our teams are expected to address items of technical debt (including green debt) as part of each iteration. | Like other practices including site-reliability engineering and error budgets, we have established a carbon budget which teams are targeted to spend to ensure we are making our services more efficient and waste less. |
| Backlog | Where does it live and how do you prioritise green debt amongst other backlog items? | Where we track technical debt it is added to the backlog so we don't forget about it. | We have mechanisms in the backlog to identify items of technical debt which impact sustainability NFRs. We prioritise these amongst other technical debt items to ensure we are having as much impact as possible. | We can easily identify items of green debt in the backlog and report on the anticipated benefits. |
Incorporating sustainability into your organisations service and product roadmap helps re-enforce the importance of these initiatives. Setting goals around reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions can act as the catalyst to action.
| Measure | Description | Score: 1 | Score: 3 | Score: 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product | How balanced is your product roadmap between new feature delivery and making efficiency improvements? | We have a product roadmap that identifies the new features we are planning to launch over the next few months. | Our product roadmap identifies both the new features we are planning to launch over the next few months and the improvements we wish to make addressing any technical or green debt. | Our product roadmap identifies both the new features we are planning to launch over the next few months and the improvements we wish to make addressing any technical or green debt. |
| Planning | How far ahead do you plan. Beyond work being on your backlog, do you know when it will all get addressed? | We use agile methods and plan a few sprints ahead for the new features that we intend to launch. We focus on the details of the stories only for the current and next sprints, which are led by the product owner and architects. | We use agile methods, plan a few sprints ahead and know the detail of the stories for the current and next sprints. We constantly refine stories as a team. | We use agile methods, plan a few sprints ahead and know the detail of the stories for the current and next sprints. We constantly refine stories as a team. We build capacity into our plans to allow space for innovation to happen. |
| Benefits | How do you quantity expected benefits against sustainability KPI's and reconcile them against the actual benefits gained? | We align benefits with new feature adoption and impact to the business. | Work is defined and prioritised in terms of its expected benefits and positive impact to the business. | Work is defined and prioritised in terms of its expected benefits and positive impact ot the business. We track these benefits through to realisation and report on this to the business. |
By aligning your activities with your organization’s sustainability and net-zero goals, you can justify your roadmap and get your team and your client invested in it.
| Measure | Description | Score: 1 | Score: 3 | Score: 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net-Zero | How well aligned are you to any plans your organisation has to reduce its carbon impact? Do you know if there is a plan in place and the role you can have as part of this? | We either don't have a corporate stance on this or we have no plan on how we align our service and its impacts to those plans. | We have a corporate net-zero plan in place and we understand how our service impacts the Green House Gas Protocol (GHG) scopes 1, 2 and 3. | We have a corporate net-zero plan in place. We understand how our service impacts GHG scopes 1,2 and 3 and understand how our own impact needs to develop to align with corporate targets. |
| Carbon Reduction | If your organisation has a plan in place, how do you align with this? Do you need to think about tracking carbon in a specific way or establishing a carbon budget for the cost not just of running your products, but also the carbon cost of developing them? | We align with best practices and try to reduce waste and be efficient where we can. We don't track carbon and haven't committed to any plans to reduce impact. | We have committed to tracking our carbon impact aligned with the corporate reduction targets and identifying improvements in our service to deliver this. | We have committed to tracking and reducing our carbon impact aligned with the corporate reduction targets. We have established governance within our team to ensure we deliver on these commitments. |