Scrum Sustainability Poker: Assessing the Sustainability Effects of User Stories in Agile Software Development

In recent years, the importance of sustainability in the field of requirements engineering has increased significantly. Despite this growing interest, the availability of practical methodologies and tools for assessing sustainability impacts of software systems remains limited. Furthermore, while the majority of existing approaches focus on traditional processes, sustainability is also getting attention within the agile community. This raises the question, how practitioners can be supported in both traditional and agile software development processes to increase the sustainability of software systems. In this paper, we present the Scrum Sustainability Poker Tool. Based on the well-known planning poker method, this tool offers a novel approach for estimating the potential sustainability impacts of requirements and user stories. It also stimulates early discussions about sustainability in the development process. A preliminary evaluation of the tool has been conducted with a focus group of practitioners. Beside a novel tool, the main contribution of our research is an investigation of how requirements engineering knowledge can be effectively integrated into agile software development practices.