Digital Gardening: Sustainable Management and Evolution of Complex Software Landscapes
The project introduces a new approach based on the concept of Digital Gardening, which treats software as a continuously evolving socio-technical system rather than a static product.
The goal is to equip organizations with structured methods, governance frameworks, and tools to actively manage the quality, security, and sustainability of their software landscapes across the entire lifecycle.
To achieve this, coordinated course modules build technological, strategic, and organizational competencies, with a particular focus on developing transformation experts. These experts are trained to identify complex dependencies, technical debt, and risks at an early stage and address them systematically.
In the long term, the project aims to strengthen economic resilience and enable sustainable innovation and business models.
Abstract
Modern software landscapes are characterized by complex dependencies, rapidly aging code, knowledge loss, external risks, and the rapidly growing use of AI. The pressure to innovate accelerates these dynamics while simultaneously increasing vulnerability to quality issues, security risks, and unsustainable system decisions across the entire software supply chain. For organizations, this translates into rising lifecycle costs, increased maintenance and coordination overhead, and a gradual erosion of strategic and economic agility.
This is precisely where the concept of Digital Gardening comes in: software is not treated as a static product, but as a continuously evolving socio-technical system whose quality, security, and economic viability can only be ensured through structured maintenance, aligned decision-making and governance frameworks, appropriate tooling, and systematic further development across the entire software lifecycle.
Against this backdrop, the qualification project addresses the development of technological know-how, strategic transformation competency, AI literacy, systems thinking, and practical implementation skills through 17 coordinated course modules. An initial competency assessment captures the technical, social, and organizational challenges, training needs, and knowledge levels of participating organizations, which are then translated into the corresponding learning units.
By deliberately developing transformation experts, the project targets employees from development, project management, and leadership roles in both small and large organizations. These individuals are equipped over the long term to actively shape their software landscapes across all levels of the software development process – from operational implementation through to management and strategy.
This enables technical debt, inefficient development practices, security-relevant risks, and external and internal dependencies to be identified early and addressed systematically, before they become structurally entrenched. The project supports organizations in making visible the potential for economic, ecological, and social advancement within their software and organizational structures, and in making well-informed decisions about future technology, architecture, and operating models.
The knowledge and methodological repertoire developed in the process also form the foundation for the sustainable use of software within an organization’s own operations, the quality- and security-oriented delivery of software to customers, and the targeted expansion of existing business areas in consulting and software-based services.
Official project lead: SBA Research