Digital transformation for a sustainable future

The pace of change feels relentless. It has felt that way for quite some time now. It has certainly accelerated since 2023, when generative AI became more mainstream following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. The ubiquity of technology is unquestionable, as is its value to business and society more widely, but can this change be tackled in a more digitally sustainable manner?

The global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the technology sector have exceeded 4%. It’s mind-blowing to think this surpasses the impact of the aviation industry. It’s also worth noting that technology sector emissions are now increasing even faster due to the growing demand for AI. What is the impact of this growth? How are we measuring this? These are increasingly critical questions.

Digital transformations remain aplenty, although the term now seems less commonly used — perhaps simply because they are commonplace now. There was a time when you couldn’t escape the phrase, and we described transformations with fixed delivery timeframes. Oddly, 18 months was often quoted, I recall from some of my past experiences. Many now accept that they are ongoing and don’t end; they evolve. To my mind, this makes more sense in a digital world.

A sustainable pace

We started this article by mentioning pace. In the world of agile, we have long discussed ‘sustainable pace’. For me, this has always translated, at a high level, as: going too quickly and failing to periodically verify and validate could take you well off course and leave you in a significantly worse place than where you started. Critically, this is also about looking after the people. Agile, at its essence, is about people. When we focus only on the need for relentless pace, people inevitably burn out. Overlooking this neglects aspects of the social sustainability dimensions of transformation initiatives. Inclusivity, fairness and healthy, happy teams. These certainly help with motivation and drive towards positive outcomes.

The original agile manifesto spoke to this with one of its principles, which stated, ‘Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely’.

This is primarily about operating rhythm. Good, consistent habits and familiar synchronisation patterns of engagement across teams and stakeholders. This helps to set clear expectations and provides the channels for regular feedback. Feedback is crucial to testing assumptions and assessing whether genuine value is being delivered.

Strategic intent

That’s all well and good in terms of operating model principles for incrementally and iteratively driving change. Still, we need to elevate this and examine it through a more strategic lens.

This was one of the key findings of Green PO’s Digital Product Sustainability Pulse survey, launched in Q1 2025. A qualitative survey which heard the experiences and perspectives of an international group of seasoned product professionals from a variety of organisational contexts, it found that sustainability knowledge remains below average, while interest levels are above average. Notably, the perceived influence on sustainability varied widely across participants, which appears closely linked to the finding that sustainability is not seen as a leading success criterion. This presents an opportunity and scope to give greater consideration to holistic success measures and the broader positive impact of products, often referred to as the ‘handprint’.

Incorporating these into the business strategy and implementing them as part of an ongoing digital development roadmap presents huge opportunities to go beyond the usual focus on commercial success. Organisations shifting from a compliance-focused sustainability approach to a more strategic one can see benefits across key areas including brand perception, talent acquisition in an increasingly competitive landscape, and a broader positive impact on the community ecosystem.

The role of leadership

Product management can be seen as glue — something that drives and builds sustainable digital products, and a role crucial in bringing many of the required parties together, ensuring their voice, concerns and expectations are inputs into the direction of travel for digital transformations. 

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The key is to be a role model, encourage sustainable behaviour and act as a visible advocate. We know from years of experience that success in large-scale digital transformations is never achieved alone or by the energised few. Digital sustainability is no different and is a cross-cutting concern requiring a compelling vision, clear communication, an understanding of the benefits (both immediate and longer term) and transparency about potential operational impacts and implications. There’s often a risk of unintended consequences, too. How often do these get due consideration? Perhaps some critical thinking around potential problems with premortems could help.  

Leaders exist at every level within organisations. Alongside those championing greater digital sustainability, we need top-down leadership support to cascade and amplify the key messages, whilst allies reinforce from the bottom up. This thereby encourages others to play their part in implementing changes and transformative improvements to unlock real benefits. Existing communities of practice, meetups and playbooks can provide channels to  engage, inspire and educate audiences more widely.

Changing the narrative

Everyone has a role to play in embedding digital sustainability practices into business operations. The real opportunities lie in envisioning broader positive impact as part of the handprint and seeing it emerge through strategy.

It’s also worth remembering that digital transformation is a team sport providing an excellent platform for some divergent, convergent and emergent thinking. Others who would be natural collaborators with product teams have valuable skill sets to leverage: business analysts, UX designers, marketing managers, and, of course, software engineers are prominent examples, Experience has shown this to be a beneficial way to explore the problem and solution spaces.  

For any well-executed transformation, we want to see vision and strategy translate effectively into product roadmaps, customer-centric user stories and technical solutions, with carbon efficiency in mind throughout. The success criterion at the implementation level should almost certainly be a three-way dialogue among product, analysis and engineering. 

As the regulatory landscape evolves and the drive for AI-fuelled innovations continues at pace, it feels essential that we remain responsible, ethical and considered in our use and adoption of digital technologies, strategically focused on minimising any negative environmental and social impact, whilst we build greener products for a more sustainable future.     

Green PO is an Edinburgh-based not-for-profit led by Joanna Masraff and Sathpal Singh FBCS CITP. Its vision is ‘Products, People and Planet for a Sustainable Future’, with a supporting mission to help make every product person a green product person. To learn more, visit https://green-po.org/.