This study investigates whether big technology companies (Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft) comprehensively report inclusion and diversity actions in their software product and service design. Therefore, this research aims to address the gap in reporting on designing for inclusion actions carried out during product and service design. Using a gray literature review approach, we examined reports from a variety of sources, including Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Environment, Social and Governance (ESG), and others. Thematic analysis was applied to synthesize the results and answer the main research question: How are inclusion and diversity actions reported by big tech companies during the design of software products? Our study shows that while diversity in the workplace is frequently reported, actions related to diversity and inclusion in software design are unreported. Google, Apple and Microsoft provide more detailed insights into inclusive design approaches in their reports, while Meta and Amazon focus predominantly on environmental initiatives and workplace diversity. The findings highlight the need for standardized reporting practices and greater transparency in the software design process. We offer recommendations on what to report regarding software development in inclusion and diversity reports.

The global Information Technology (IT) market was valued at approximately $3,110 million in 2022, marking a 7.4% increase over the previous year. Of this total, around 56% pertained to the software and services sector. This growth poses a global challenge for IT organizations due to a significant gap between the increasing demand for IT skills and the availability of qualified professionals. Currently, about 87% of organizations worldwide are experiencing the effects of this skills gap, hindering business operations. Traditional undergraduate computing programs often require more time than the current market demands can afford. To address this issue, universities and companies are developing innovative educational strategies. Our goal is to share the experience of implementing four distinct cases, three in Brazil and one in Norway, so that other universities and companies can adopt similar strategies to alleviate the IT skills shortage. Therefore, this paper presents strategies for the preparation of IT professionals to mitigate the impacts of the IT labor shortage. Each case includes an experience report on the context, structure, benefits, hard and soft skills developed, and lessons learned. Finally, we summarize the contributions of these four cases by reflecting on their differences and similarities, followed by a summary of the strategies that proved effective in collaborating with companies.

Sustainability is the use of existing resources without compromising them for future generations. Resources must be guaranteed in the environmental, economic, and social dimensions. Sustainable Software Engineering is an emerging research field aiming to minimize software development's negative impacts on society. Furthermore, software sustainability can be defined as a way of keeping something running at a certain level of quality in relation to these dimensions. From the social dimension perspective, it is necessary to confirm software's trade-offs, benefits, and impacts on society since it lacks empirical evidence of its achievements in software. In this research thesis, we will explore how the literature addresses the aspect of social sustainability during software development and understand how social sustainability approaches can be integrated into the context of agile software development. In the end, we expect to have a set of guidelines, activities, and practices that can be adopted by agile teams.

Social aspects in software sustainability refer to the impact of the software on the broader social and societal context. These aspects involve considerations such as accessibility, equity, inclusion, diversity, ethical and human values. While achieving software sustainability requires developers to embrace approaches that support the three dimensions of sustainability, there remains a lack of concrete approaches to address social aspects during software development. This literature review aims to facilitate the integration of social aspects into the software development process by identifying approaches related to social sustainability in software engineering. We extracted and analyzed data from 19 studies through thematic syntheses. The results of our analysis provide a list of recommended tools and practices to support social aspects and attain software sustainability goals. By incorporating these approaches into software development, we ensure that the software is not only technically sustainable but also socially responsible from a human perspective.

Software sustainability has been a trending topic in the last decade in academia. Studies related to software sustainability propose models, frameworks, or practices that can be applied in the industry. But most of these proposals are still not systematically adopted in the industry. Therefore, there is an opportunity to create a structured meeting to support the concrete adoption of sustainability practices in software development. This paper aims to provide an overview of these frameworks and how they can help facilitate sustainability-driven meetings (SusDM). Seeking this, we present practical examples and a workflow to prepare the meeting by applying the existing sustainability frameworks in SusDM. As a position paper, our hypothesis is that the contributions of this meeting may be related to improving the knowledge of software developers on sustainable software engineering, discovering new sustainability requirements, prioritization, and implementing software sustainability practices.

Sustainability concerns have been noticed as the most critical asset worldwide to allow the next generations to survive in a world better than the one we live in today. Many initiatives are determined to monitor, enhance technology, and avoid environmental degradation. The financial sector is one of these players who have social responsibility at the strategic level of the organizations. In past years digital transformation of the banks and fintech helped to achieve the sustainability aspects. Therefore, this research aims to discover the practices of sustainability applied during the software development process and software product management of the financial sector through multiple case studies. Five organizations were interviewed, 80 practices were extracted and grouped into six categories related to social, environmental, and economic sustainability aspects.

Sustainable Software Engineering, also known as "Green IN Software", focuses on the production of sustainable software. The traditional software engineering process causes negative influences on the environment, economy and to society. For instance, the energy consumption during the software processing is considered as a first order impact because it directly leads to high costs on energy bills and consequently on the environment. Moreover, the optimization of a process implementation and software development can lead to second order impacts, also referred to as indirect impacts. Finally, the third other impact considers the user's behaviors and consciousness regarding the concept of sustainability. In order to mitigate these negative impacts, the purpose of this research is to identify, via systematic literature review, the practices of sustainable software engineering reported by the academy applied in the industry. Through the systematic literature review, it was possible to discover 170 practices in which 70 were related to practices of energy consumption that could be adopted during the software development. Our results indicate that those practices emerged from the grounded theory, which are part of SWEBOK areas and are applicable in the industry.

Aiming at process maturity and agility, various studies have proposed combinations of CMMI-DEV with agile methods. Yet other studies have proposed maturity models founded on agility, focused on agile process improvement. These agile maturity models define different structures, approaches and underlying concepts for agile maturity. This study aims at presenting them in a unified manner by identifying the studies, analyzing the proposed models and comparing them. The research approach was the systematic literature review on scientific databases. Based on the 14 models found, we analyzed levels’ structures, maturity concept, assessment methods and mature practices. Our results show that current maturity models do not agree in some aspects but converge in others. Based on these findings, we suggest future studies to enrich process improvement knowledge in agile methods.