An Empirical Study of Practitioners’ Perspectives on Green Software Engineering
Venue
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway (2016) (to appear)
Publication Year
2016
Authors
Irene Manotas, Christian Bird, Rui Zhang, David Shepherd, Ciera Jaspan, Caitlin Sadowski, Lori Pollock, James Clause
BibTeX
Abstract
The energy consumption of software is an increasing concern as the use of mobile
applications, embedded systems, and data center-based services expands. While
research in green software engineering is correspondingly increasing, little is
known about the current practices and perspectives of software engineers in the
field. This paper describes the first empirical study of how practitioners think
about energy when they write requirements, design, construct, test, and maintain
their software. We report findings from a quantitative, targeted survey of 464
practitioners from ABB, Google, IBM, and Microsoft, which was motivated by and
supported with qualitative data from 18 in-depth interviews with Microsoft
employees. The major findings and implications from the collected data
contextualize existing green software engineering research and suggest directions
for researchers aiming to develop strategies and tools to help practitioners
improve the energy usage of their applications.
