The Planet as Our Stakeholder – Using your Circle of Influence for Small Sustainability Steps

As agility practitioners, we understand the power of small, iterative changes. But when it comes to sustainability, many teams hesitate, thinking the impact is beyond their reach. This is a call to the agile community to take small, meaningful steps toward sustainability, starting right where you are.

Take Marjolein Pilon as an example. Her story shows how even small actions in the realm of sustainability can lead to significant change. Marjolein, a freelance Scrum Master at a major Dutch bank, began her sustainability journey with her personal life—focusing on creating a climate-neutral household through solar panels and a heat pump. Yet, she wanted to bring this mindset into her work, and the opportunity arose through a casual coffee break conversation, when she asked a team member, "Do you have any idea what the carbon footprint of our IT landscape is?" It turned out that no one had thought about it. This simple question sparked Marjolein to organize a team retrospective specifically focused on sustainability. In preparation of this session, she looked for information in the internet but found only a few ressources on "Agility and Sustainability" (Sustainable Software Design Principles: Asim Hussain (codecademy.com),  Agile Sustainability - Comparative Agility, for more recent information see Sources). But during that session, one developer said something that struck her: “We could easily reduce 10% of our energy usage if we just switch off environments that are no longer used, or decommission some legacy components.” Marjolein was impressed and thought, “What if every team could save that much? That could have a massive impact.”

Marjolein made a conscious decision not to tackle other aspects of sustainability, such as social issues. “GHG emissions was my focus and my circle of influence.” And rightly so: Even before the explosive growth of AI, the carbon footprint of the IT sector, particularly data centers, was already significant and comparable to that of the aviation industry. Recent studies highlight that the demand for AI is expected to triple carbon dioxide emissions from data centers, with emissions predicted to reach 2.5 billion tons by 2030. At the same time, we must reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030 to meet the European Union’s climate targets under the Green Deal, which aims for climate neutrality by 2050.

She developed that initial retrospective into a 1.5-hour workshop and started rolling it out to other teams within the bank. One team achieved savings of up to 45%! Marjolein, who admits she’s no technical expert, said, “It's really simple. I did it without asking anyone's permission. Just get started and then see what happens, and then you can make your next informed decision. And trust that the things you do will always have a ripple effect.”

Every retrospective begins with a check-in, where participants can share their feelings. “Some people feel guilty because they still fly or eat meat. Others say, ‘We have no influence over this.’ It’s important to listen without judgment, so people feel safe to open up.”

The core of the retrospective revolves around the questions: What is necessary to reduce your company’s IT carbon footprint by half by 2030? What can you do within your circle of influence? Small, actionable steps are identified through an impact analysis. “This gives people hope. They feel empowered to actually do something.” In her slides in the Sources, you can find examples of the small steps for the planet the teams identified.

This success prompted Marjolein to shift her career focus more toward her newfound mission. To ensure the workshops in the bank could continue in her absence, she led a train-the-trainer session, expecting 5 or 6 attendees. Instead, over 100 signed up—Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Business Analysts, and others. And she shares her material on the retro here, so you can try it yourself!

Marjolein took a four-month sabbatical to reflect on her next steps. During that time, she began speaking at conferences. We had the chance to meet in February 2024, when both of us gave talks at the OOP conference in Munich. Since then, she’s shared her insights at events like Agile 2024 in Dallas, Texas (slides), Women in Agile, DevOpsDays etc. While it’s clear that there is a growing and passionate group of people interested in sustainability (Agile Alliance Sustainability Initiative, Green PO, Agilists4Planet), the reality is that many still gravitate towards topics more directly tied to their daily work. This makes it challenging to capture broad attention, but with patience and persistence, we’ll see these ideas continue to spread and take root in the community. Every talk, every conversation, contributes to building that momentum. 

Now she is working for a power grid operator, where sustainability is already part of the business and the culture. "At this company, they knew about my mission from the start and fully support it." Her work has grown beyond retrospectives. Teams now include "Planet as a Stakeholder" in their user story templates, embedding sustainability in everyday discussions. “It’s a culture shift, but once it happens, it becomes second nature.” Sustainability must be transferred from IT to the entire value chain: Strategic discussions around roadmaps should feature climate neutrality alongside customer value. “We need greenhouse gas thinking in IT architecture, in metrics, in guidelines, and in tools for developers.”  In short: Start scaling the green approach to the entire IT organization.

Additional Sources:

Book by Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, Sara Bergman, “Building Green Software: A Sustainable Approach to Software Development and Operations”

Green Software Foundation | GSF

Book (only in German) by Sabine Canditt, “Kleine Schritte. Große Wirkung. Mit Agilität zu mehr Nachhaltigkeit”