Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in IT, but is often still not a standard part of software development processes. Activities such as continuous integration, always-on environments, and overprovisioned cloud resources contribute to unnecessary energy consumption, while clear and actionable guidance remains lacking. This thesis explores how GreenOps principles can be embedded into development workflows by designing a practical GreenOps Maturity Model that helps teams structurally reduce their environmental impact.

💡Areas of Interest: GreenOps, Sustainability, Software Development

Sustainability is rarely a first-class citizen in software development processes. Conventional development lifecycles often disregard the energy consumption and carbon footprint of engineering activities. Builds running during peak hours, always-on staging environments, and overprovisioned servers are common practices that contribute to unnecessary energy usage. While frameworks provide structure for development practices, there is still no widely adopted, actionable guidance for reducing environmental impact during software delivery.

As environmental concerns become increasingly relevant in IT, both internal teams and clients require structured support for integrating sustainability into their workflows. Although GreenOps, a discipline focused on reducing the environmental footprint of IT operations, offers promising concepts, there is no mature, standardized model to guide teams in their sustainability efforts during development.

The Assignment

In this thesis, you will explore how GreenOps principles can be embedded into software development processes. Your work will result in a GreenOps Maturity Model and associated guidance that are both actionable for Info Support teams and applicable to client environments.

Your tasks include:

1. Process Analysis: Identify the stages in the software development lifecycle that contribute most to energy consumption (e.g., CI/CD builds, test environments, cloud usage).

2. Sustainable Planning Strategies: Investigate and design planning methods that reduce energy consumption. This may include carbon-aware scheduling, automatically pausing non-critical environments and using sustainable CI/CD configurations.

3. Maturity Model Design: Develop a scalable GreenOps Maturity Model that defines progressive levels of sustainable software practices. Include required tools, behavioral changes, and process adaptations per maturity level.

4. Business Guidance: Translate findings into a business advisory report containing concrete recommendations, tooling options, and estimated CO₂ reduction per intervention.

5. Implementation Plan: Design a rollout strategy for integrating the model into Info Support’s practices, including team onboarding, CI/CD integration and monitoring of environmental impact.

About Info Support

Info Support specializes in custom software, data/AI solutions, management, and training and is active in the Finance, Industry, Agriculture, Food & Retail, Mobility & Public, and Healthcare sectors. We provide solid and innovative solutions for complex and critical software issues. Our headquarters are located in Veenendaal (NL) and Mechelen (BE). At present, approximately 500 employees are employed by Info Support.

Info Support's working method is characterized by a number of core values: solidity, integrity, craftsmanship, and passion. These core values are intertwined in our work and the way we interact with each other.

To ensure that all employees are always up to date with the latest developments, Info Support has an in-house knowledge center that eagerly satisfies the hunger for more or different knowledge and skills.

B2 language proficiency in Dutch is required.