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Digital transformation is now reaching into topics like End-of-life Care, Funeral Culture, and Coping with Grief. Those developments are inevitably accompanied by the growing challenge to design IT systems that are appropriate and helpful for the stakeholders involved. Our aim in this paper is to further introduce the rather new combined research field of Socioinformatics and Thanatology (the scientific study of death and dying) and to present it with the first results on which requirements to consider for the design of digital tools within ‘Thanatopractice’. By using Participatory Design and the Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF) in the context of three workshops on socio-technical systems (Online Pastoral Care, Virtual Graveyards, and AI Memory Avatars), we want to sensitize software practitioners to the multidimensional impacts of their products and services in a field, which the participants in the workshops often described as “highly sensitive”.
Year after year, software engineers celebrate new achievements in the field of AI. At the same time, the question about the impacts of AI on society remains insufficiently answered in terms of a comprehensive technology assessment. This article aims to provide software practitioners with a theoretically grounded and practically tested approach that enables an initial understanding of the potential multidimensional impacts. Subsequently, the results form the basis for discussions on AI software requirements. The approach is based on the Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF) and Participatory Design. We conducted three workshops on different AI topics: 1. Autonomous Driving, 2. Music Composition, and 3. Memory Avatars. Based on the results of the workshops we conclude that a two-level approach should be adopted: First, a broad one that includes a diverse selection of stakeholders and overall impact analysis. Then, in a second step, specific approaches narrowing down the stakeholders and focusing on one or few impact areas.
For many practitioners, considering sustainability during a software development project is a challenge. The Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF) is a tool for thinking through short, medium-and long-term impacts of socio-technical systems on its surrounding environment. While SusAF has been used by several companies, is not widely adopted in industry yet. In this Vision Paper, we discuss the options for extending the reach of SusAF and what it would take to evolve SusAF into a (de-facto) standard
Modelability of processes is a recognized and important characteristic of any modeling language. Nevertheless, it is not always purposeful or easy to create process models for every kind of workflow. This article discusses the opportunities and limitations of modeling agile development projects with SCRUM as an example. For this purpose, a BPMN and an S-BPM model for SCRUM are presented. The discussion along recognized rules for good process models shows that both notations provide possible and accurate insights into the process of SCRUM on the one hand. On the other hand, the models raise questions of necessity, added value, and relevance in practice. Practitioners can use the developed models to technically implement agile project management, while researchers benefit from a discourse on opportunities and limitations of modeling agility.
Software engineering, as a central practice of digitalization, needs to become accountable for sustainability. In light of the ecological crises and the tremendous impact of digital systems on reshaping economic and social arrangements - often with negative side-effects - we need a sustainability transformation of the digital transformation. However, this is a complex and long-term task. In this article we combine an analysis of accountability arrangements in software engineering and a model of sustainability transformations to trace how certain dynamics are starting to make software engineering accountable for sustainability in the technological, cultural, economic and governance domains. The article discusses existing approaches for sustainable software engineering and software engineering for sustainability, traces emerging discourses that connect digitalization and sustainability, highlights new digital business models that may support sustainability and shows governance efforts to highlight “green and digital” policy problems. Yet, we argue that these are so far niche dynamics and that a sustainability transformation requires a collective and long-lasting effort to engender systemic changes. The goal should be to create varied accountability arrangements for sustainability in software engineering which is embedded in complex ways in society and economy.