Framework for Modeling Risk Factors in Green Agile Software Development for GSD Vendors

In the last decades, agile methodologies are commonly employed to develop and deliver valuable software, with high user satisfaction at a comparatively low cost. However in recent years, the emergence of Green Software Engineering has necessitated that software developers prioritize the development of Green And Sustainable Software (GSS). Green software development is about developing and utilizing software with restricted energy and computing resources. In recent years, as the application of Global Software Development (GSD), software engineers have applied agile methods for fast, interactive, and green software development. However, such adoption of agile methods poses certain risks. The contribution of this study is two-fold. First, it identifies 8 Risk Factors (RFs), through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), in which 42 relevant papers are identified and reviewed. The identified RFs need to be avoided by the GSD vendors while using agile methods to deliver GSS. Second, the findings of the SLR study are empirically validated through a questionnaire survey from 106 GSD experts belonging to 25 disparate countries. The results of the SLR and survey were compared and analyzed through a two-proportion Z test using R, which shows some significant variation for some RFs. Lastly, a framework for modeling structural association among RFs was established using an interpretive structural modeling approach. Research results illustrate that the outcomes of our industrial survey are mostly coherent with the SLR findings. Future, research should focus on developing predictive models using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to analyze project data in real-time, promoting proactive decision-making for GSS development.