Evaluation of the effect of software development life cycle sustainability factors on performance by structural equation modeling

Humanity is facing sustainability problems at a serious level. When we look at it from a social perspective, we can see that the inequality is rising rapidly. Along with the increasing inequality, murder, obesity and depression are increasing in the society. From an environmental point of view, global warming effects and scarcity of natural resource and food seem to increase. Apart from the effects on humanity, there are also serious threats to biodiversity and nature. In the face of these problems, relying on innovation and technological solutions without contributing to sustainability makes it impossible to solve such problems effectively. Software is one of the most fundamental components of technological society that is fast growing and entering into every aspect of our lives. Today, people use software applications not only to work in their professional business life, but also in daily life. It is impossible to imagine a future without software. This tendency has led to need more and more software applications day by day and introduce more software development effort. As software applications have such an important place in our lives, the importance of software engineering is also increasing. Software engineering is the use and research of measurable, disciplined and systematic methods for the development, operation and maintenance of a software application. Together with evolving software engineering knowledge, the concept of sustainability is becoming an important point in the field of information technology to support our future. Sustainability has not been adequately addressed in earlier software engineering methodologies. But the widespread adoption of software applications and limited natural resources have led researchers to focus more on their researchs that will provide sustainability in the software development process. Due to the growing popularity and the power and resources required to produce software units, software engineering can greatly impact sustainable improvements. In addition to the hardware aspects, software is gaining great importance in the researchs whch carry out in the context of ways to make information technologies more sustainable and to encourage eco-friendly actions by IT. Since software manages the activities of the hardware they run on, they are also responsible for the energy they consume. For this reason, it is necessary to produce energy efficient software to solve the problem of increasing energy consumption in IT field. To develop effective software in the sense of sustainability, software developers need to know how to achieve them and have appropriate tools to achieve that goal. Additionally, the software development process should also be evaluated in terms of sustainability metrics. Based on the definition of sustainability, models were developed to support sustainability for software engineering. These models focus on the processes of creating sustainable software, especially when considering the whole life cycle of the software product (development, usage and product life span). In order to achieve sustainable software development processes, software engineering processes have been broadened to include improvements in sustainability considerations. A sustainable software product can be discovered if the people involved in the software development process are aware of the sustainable impact of the software product. For this reason, the software development model must be included in the process of measuring the sustainability of the software. The sustainability metrics must be determined by the people involved in the software process. In that way, the sustainability process can be institutionalized within the organization. Because, people adapt more easily to the decisions they make. In order to make sustainability aspects manageable, the specified requirements and measures must be included in the software development process. At this point, software developers and software architects can optimize the software product in accordance with its sustainable metrics. Through the software development process, a sustainable software product is created by considering the environmental, social and economic impacts and putting sustainable development goals. In this study, a survey was conducted to include the people who involved in the software development process, in the process of determining factors that affect a sustainable software development model. With the survey study, people involved in the software development process directly contributed to the extension of the software development model in terms of sustainability. Thus, it is aimed to obtain more accurate results. Then, for the 23 items related to sustainability factors in the software development process included in the survey study, explanatory factor analysis was applied. After that, the suitability of the model was tested by confirmatory factor analysis. Before these studies, various tests were performed to find out whether the data were normally distributed and whether they were reliable. As a result of confirmatory factor analysis, it is concluded that there are 5 sustainability dimensions which are environmental, economic, social, individual and technical which affect the software development process. After determining the sustainability factors affecting the software development process, the impact of the sustainability factor and the level of education, age, and experience of the people involved in the software development process on software performance, which measured through model created with reference to ISO 25000 standards, were examined using the structural equation model created using the IBM AMOS program. Before testing hypotheses, the validity of the measurement models was tested and improvements were made to the models if needed. At the last stage, the hypotheses have been tested with the Path Analysis established through the AMOS program. The hypotheses other than the H4 hypothesis, which measures the effect of the education on software performance, are significant. As a result, as stated in the literature, the sustainability factor, which affects the software development process and is composed of economic, social, environmental, individual and technical dimensions, has been determined as a result of the survey study on the selected sample. Again, as stated in the theory, the structural equality model determines that the descriptive attributes and sustainability factors are influential on software performance. It has been observed that the factors affecting performance positively affect the sustainability of software development negatively. This shows that while the software development process is focused on the performance of the software product, it is away from the concepts of sustainability. However, if it is desired that the continuity of the marginal utility obtained from the software industry, it should be paid attention to the optimum use of limited resources as well as performance The sustainability of the software development process does not only leave a more livable world for future generations, but also contributes to the ecnomic structure and productivity of the companies. In an environment where competition is intense, having a sensitive profile in terms of more efficient use of resources and sustainability can play an active role in favor of companies, customers and employees.