When we talk about sustainability today, most people think of wind turbines, electric cars, or personal consumption. Hardly anyone thinks of software. Yet our digital systems hide a massive, invisible energy and resource footprint. Data centers consume more electricity than entire countries, and poorly optimized software forces hardware to be replaced far too quickly.
This topic has accompanied me for many years. As a software engineer, I’ve seen how small design decisions can make huge differences in energy consumption. Later, as an Agile Coach and RTE, I supported organizations in steering complex IT landscapes and teams. Again and again, I ran into the same gap: agility brings speed and adaptability – but the ecological dimension was left out.
This is exactly where Green Agile comes in.
Why Green Agile?
Classical agile methods like Scrum, SAFe, or Kanban focus on delivery capability, customer value, and flexibility. All important values – but they fall short if we exclude long-term responsibility for environment and society.
Green Agile combines the principles of agility (transparency, inspection, adaptation) with the dimensions of sustainability:
- Ecological – reducing energy consumption, extending hardware lifecycles, mindful use of resources
- Economic – increasing efficiency, avoiding technical waste, building future-proof IT strategies
- Social – healthy teams, fair collaboration, ethical awareness in product development
Agility without sustainability is short-term. Sustainability without agility often remains theory. Only in combination can teams and organizations truly become future-proof.
The Green Agile Guide
To make this connection tangible, I created the Green Agile Guide. Inspired by the Scrum Guide, but deliberately extended. It’s not a new framework, not a collection of methods – but a mindset that provides orientation.
The Guide describes how teams can integrate ecological, economic, and social responsibility into their way of working, without sacrificing speed or flexibility. It’s about asking better questions:
- What is the ecological footprint of our architecture?
- How do we measure sustainability alongside time-to-market and business value?
- How do we create structures that work not only for the next quarter but also for the next generation?
Outlook – and My Stance
With my company mehr.wert, I support organizations as a Fractional CTO. My stance: technology and leadership should not only strive for efficiency and profit, but must also create more value for the world. Green Agile is one part of this vision.
I invite you to join the conversation, share your feedback, and help shape the Green Agile Guide. Because only together can we make IT not just faster, but also more sustainable.
