Human Values as the Basis for Sustainable Software Development

Abstract

Software has an increasing impact on individual well-being, the environment, and our society. To mitigate this potentially harmful impact, scholars have proposed to go beyond traditional requirements. One approach that has been proposed is the consideration of human values, which can be used to constitute dimensions of sustainability, as requirements in the process of software development. To this day, there is no consensus on which values that should be or where to find information about them. This contribution combines value lists of sources from multiple backgrounds into one extensive list of values, which can facilitate sustainable software development. This paper will demonstrate how this list of values can help define the social sustainability dimension. Such an extensive list is also important for other disciplines working with values, such as value sensitive design.