Sustainability

Understanding of sustainability

The foundation of sustainability is the sustainability concept of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission). This defines that sustainable development should satisfy the needs of the present, but must not endanger the needs of future generations. To accomplish this, economic, social, and ecological processes must be brought into harmony with each other. Sustainable development strives to achieve a balanced and sustainable relationship between nature and its capacity to renew itself and the demands placed on it by the population.

The implications of today's actions for the future must accordingly be taken into account. For example, the consumption of the environment and resources must be reduced to a sustainable level for the long term while maintaining economic capacity and social cohesion. All these sustainability requirements also affect the projects. When defining the objectives to be achieved, the project must not be limited to economic efficiency alone, but must also include society and the environment. In this respect, successful project management also has a positive impact on sustainable development.

From a sustainability and life-cycle perspective in the area of information and communication technologies, the focus is primarily on energy and resource efficiency as well as working conditions in producing countries. Special attention is paid to procurement by defining ecological and social award criteria. For information technologies, an important role is also played by long-term data security, data protection, data integrity, and access to knowledge.

Sustainability with HERMES

HERMES as a complete project

HERMES supports the sustainability of the solution. The method components are described with regard to sustainability aspects below.

Phases

It is important to enshrine sustainability objectives when defining strategic objectives. These are included in the project as a requirement during the initiation phase.

• For the project sponsor, one of the decision-making criteria for the execution release is whether and how the project meets the sustainability requirements and objectives. As a result, unsustainable projects are not even released for continuation.
• In addition to compliance with the requirements and alignment with the strategic objectives, the achievement of the sustainability objectives is also taken into account as an evaluation criterion for each decision on release or phase release.

Outcomes

All outcomes required for sustainable operation are developed in the project. These include the organization with its processes, as well as the outcomes for maintenance and further development, including the user manual, operating manual, product concept, solution architecture, and detailed specifications. The test infrastructure and test tools are transferred from the project to the core organization for further development after project closure.

The following outcomes support sustainability in decision-making:

• Study
  Evaluation criteria for the decision on next steps (choice of solution option)
• Tender documentation (specifications)
  List of criteria for evaluating the solution and tenderers
• Checklists
  Review points and criteria in the decision-making process

Tasks

Several tasks specifically support sustainability in the project, for example:

• Decision-making tasks such as:
  • Decisions on execution release, phase release, release, and project closure;
  • Decision on next steps;
  • Decision on solution architecture;
• Agree on and steer goods/services task;
• Manage and inform stakeholders task;
• Prepare procurement analysis task;
• Procurement module tasks.

Modules

In the procurement module, the sustainability objectives and requirements are included in the list of criteria for the procurement of services and products and are included in the evaluation.

Roles

With their powers and responsibility, roles can promote a conscious approach to resources. The understanding needed for this is created already when defining the objectives. Accordingly, all roles and their tasks are decisive for the project's sustainability.

The following three roles are particularly relevant with regard to sustainability objectives:

• Project sponsor
  • Defines the objectives in line with the strategy and sustainability requirements.
  • Prioritizes the solution objectives, resolves conflicts between objectives, and incorporates them into solution requirements and organizational requirements.
  • Regularly checks the implementation of requirements and the achievement of objectives.
  • Ensures the involvement of stakeholders and their requirements.
  • Ensures the long-term resources needed for operation.
• Project management
  • Enshrines sustainability awareness in the project.
  • Considers sustainability criteria when making decisions.
  • Ensures the careful use of resources.
  • When assigning roles, ensures that specialists have the skills needed to fill the roles and closes any skills gaps
    (in the agile approach, this falls within the powers of the development team).
• User representative
  • Integrates the sustainability objectives into the solution requirements and prioritizes them.
  • Anchors sustainability awareness in solution development.
  • Understands the value creation of development work to include sustainability.
  • Considers the interests of stakeholders.
  • Supports the project sponsor in defining sustainability objectives.
  • Incorporates sustainability into the procurement process.
  • Ensures that sustainability aspects are factored in when defining requirements.
  • Sees to a value-oriented prioritization of requirements.
    • The sustainability objectives are included in the evaluation of the requirements.
  • Evaluates options also from a sustainability perspective.

In the project organization, the following execution roles in particular are concerned with sustainability:

• Business analyst
  • Determines the sustainability requirements of the core organization.
  • Integrates the sustainability objectives into the organizational requirements.
  • Considers the sustainability aspects when drawing up the organization concept.
  • Accompanies the user representative in the formulation of the sustainability objectives.
• Operations manager
  • Considers sustainability aspects when defining the operation-related requirements.
  • Considers sustainability aspects when designing the operating concept.
  • Ensures sustainable operation.

In the core organization, the following role groups in particular deal with sustainability:

• Controlling and compliance bodies
  • Assess compliance with the requirements and the achievement of the sustainability objectives.
  • Check the product concept.
  • Check the solution architecture.
    • Homogeneous architectures should make it possible to ensure the long-term operation and further development of systems.
• Executive board
  • Prioritizes the projects in the portfolio also using criteria that take sustainability into account.
  • Checks whether the sustainability requirements and objectives can be realistically achieved with the project.