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SUSTAINABLE IT, the right way

Reduce the IT impacts, optimize resources, and drive sustainable digital transformation in a practical way.

This book is 100% completeLast updated on 2026-08-11
Francesco Fullone

In a world where every byte has an impact, Sustainable IT, the Right Way turns digital sustainability from slogan into daily practice. No abstract theory: numbers, monitoring, OKRs, and a real action plan. Concrete examples, ready-to-use tools, and the Green Software Foundation's best practices, in operational language for those who want to make a difference today.

This book is a translation into English of SUSTAINABLE IT, the right way which was originally written in Italian

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About

About

About the Book

Have you ever calculated how much waste your IT infrastructure is generating?

Oversized servers running at 15% capacity. CI/CD pipelines compiling the same code five times a day. 4MB landing pages, to name just three things. If the answer is "I don't know," you're in good company—and this book is for you.

"Sustainable IT, the Right Way" isn't an environmental manifesto, and it won't ask you to go back to green phosphorus terminals. It's a practical system, tested in workshops with tech teams of all sizes, to reduce waste, measure real impact, and build governance that lasts over time.

What you'll find inside:

- The SOFT (Strategy, Operations, Finance, Technology) framework to classify every sustainability initiative and understand where to start

- A maturity assessment based on the Gartner 5-level model to capture where you are and where you want to go

- The SCI (Software Carbon Intensity) formula explained with real numbers—not as an ISO formula from an appendix, but as an operational tool

- Sustainable Procurement: How to evaluate vendors based on environmental criteria without turning every RFP into an academic treatise

- The 7 Sins of Greenwashing: How to Communicate Sustainability Without Making the News for the Wrong Reasons

- A Comprehensive Case Study—A B2B Fintech with 150 to 300 People that Walks the Entire Journey, from Accidental Waste Uncovered to Structured Governance

Francesco Fullone, founder of Daruma Consulting, distills years of experience in IT sustainability, facilitation, and metrics into 12 chapters that will take you from "we don't even know how much we consume" to a concrete plan for the first 90 days.

This book is for you if:

- You're a CTO, engineering manager, or tech lead who wants to reduce your carbon footprint without losing performance

- You need to prepare your company for CSRD and don't know where to start

- You want to connect KPIs and OKRs to sustainability with causal logic, not with made-up numbers

- You're looking for a way to move from awareness to action without getting stuck in analysis paralysis

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ManagementLeadershipEthics & TechnologyDevOpsGreen Business and SustainabilityStrategyDigital TransformationTheory Of ConstraintsEnvironmentBehavior ChangeEnergyPolicy

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This book is a translation into English of SUSTAINABLE IT, the right way which was originally written in Italian

Author

About the Author

Francesco Fullone

Business and Sustainability designer, advisor, keynote speaker, green software advocate, and conference organizer. I’m Francesco Fullone: business designer, strategic and sustainability consultant, mentor, and investor in technology companies with social and environmental impact.

I work with entrepreneurs and managers on concrete business problems: blocked strategies, processes that seem to work but hide costs nobody wants to see, and decisions that have been postponed for months. My approach combines strategy, facilitation, and measurement — with a preference for practical frameworks and a declared allergy to slides full of numbers that nobody actually reads.

I help organizations of all sizes define their value propositions, validate them, and improve their organizational structures to achieve their goals. I use business design, OKR, design thinking, and sustainability as analytical tools — not as ends in themselves. When a framework isn’t useful, I say so. When removing complexity is the answer rather than adding it, that’s what I do.

I’m the founder of Daruma Consulting, my strategic advisory firm. I’ve co-founded several companies, including Apropos (events and workshops for communities and businesses), Digitiamo (NLP and AI products), Carma Consulting (food tech innovation), and Aura (LED and IoT for agriculture). Previously, I spent over a decade contributing to Ideato’s (sold) growth, one of Italy’s most prominent software development agencies.

Since 2002, I’ve been president of GrUSP, a non-profit association that promotes best practices in web development in Italy and organizes international technical conferences. I’m a speaker and organizer at international technology and innovation events — my full talk profile is on Sessionize.

I teach at Bologna Business School, H-Farm Business School, and Talent Garden Innovation School, covering business design, OKR, and strategic management. As a Green Software Practitioner at the Green Software Foundation, I bring a sustainability lens to organizations looking to reduce the environmental impact of their IT systems. As a mentor for the Founder Institute and other accelerator programs, I support early-stage founders with the same direct, pragmatic approach I apply to corporate clients.

I write on fullo.net — about frameworks tested in real workshops, LLM prompt optimization, and whatever else refuses to stay quiet. I publish a weekly newsletter on sustainable technology at Sustainable IT and on Substack. I also maintain an active presence on GitHub, where I publish tools and experiments related to my work.

The Right Way is my book series for those who want to use the main management tools without being used by them. Each volume tackles a topic — KPI, OKR, Sustainable IT, Theory of Change, Business Innovation, Business Design — with the same approach: no hype, no theory for its own sake, only what actually works in daily practice.

The series is published on Leanpub: leanpub.com/u/fullo

Connect on LinkedIn · Consulting and advisory: darumahq.it

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Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter 0: How to Use This Book (and Why You Should Read It)

  1. 0.1 Why this book
  2. 0.2 Who this book is for
  3. 0.3 The three ways to use this book
  4. 0.4 The structure of the book
  5. 0.5 How this book relates to the rest of the series
  6. 0.6 The exercises and the cards
  7. 0.7 Conventions used in this book
  8. Chapter 0 Checkpoint
  9. Are you ready?

PART I: AWARENESS — UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT

Chapter 1: Sustainable IT is a business problem (not just an environmental one)

  1. 1.1 Introducing GreenFinance
  2. 1.2 It wasn’t an isolated case
  3. 1.3 Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet, Profit
  4. 1.4 The sustainable transformation journey
  5. 1.5 The collective action problem (Game Theory)
  6. 1.6 Exercise one: The true cost of software
  7. Chapter 1 checkpoint

Chapter 2: Maturity assessment and roadmap

  1. 2.1 The boardroom ambush
  2. 2.2 The problem of choice paralysis
  3. 2.3 The Gartner Sustainable IT Maturity Model
  4. 2.4 Self-assessment: Where are you today?
  5. 2.5 The effort-impact matrix
  6. 2.6 The eleven-week roadmap
  7. 2.7 Six months later: The reassessment
  8. 2.8 Lessons from Sara’s journey
  9. 2.9 The business case for getting budget: quick wins before strategic projects
  10. 2.10 Exercise two: Maturity self-assessment
  11. Checkpoint Chapter 2

Chapter 3: The SOFT Framework for transformation

  1. 3.1 Bringing order to chaos
  2. 3.2 Why sustainability projects fail
  3. 3.3 SOFT: the four pillars of transformation
  4. 3.4 How the four pillars interconnect
  5. 3.5 Putting it into practice: the first ninety days
  6. 3.6 Six months later: the results of the transformation
  7. 3.7 The failure patterns avoided
  8. 3.8 Lessons from the SOFT journey
  9. 3.9 Exercise three: SOFT Pillar Quick Check
  10. Checkpoint, Chapter 3

PART II: DEFINING THE STRATEGY

Chapter 4: Measuring and Setting Goals — Sustainable KPIs and OKRs

  1. 4.1 The dashboard of wishes (and why it doesn’t work)
  2. 4.2 Telling signal from noise (KPIs)
  3. 4.3 Defining the destination (OKRs and backward mapping)
  4. 4.4 Templates and Canvases
  5. 4.5 Practical Exercises
  6. 4.6 Chapter 4 Checkpoint

Chapter 5: Sustainable Procurement — Who You Choose Matters as Much as What You Build

  1. 5.1 The impact of procurement
  2. 5.2 The ‘cheap’ supplier costs you 3 times over
  3. 5.3 The two frameworks that change the game
  4. 5.4 Evaluation criteria: the Triple Bottom Line applied to suppliers
  5. 5.5 EXERCISE 6: Vendor Sustainability Scorecard (20 minutes)
  6. 5.7 Compliance isn’t bureaucracy, it’s accountability
  7. 5.9 The business case that convinces the CFO
  8. 5.10 Chapter 5 checkpoint

PART III: IMPLEMENTATION — OPTIMISING THE TECHNOLOGY

Chapter 6: Sustainable user experience — when design meets sustainability

  1. 6.1 When the homepage consumed as much as a data centre
  2. 6.2 The problem: digital obesity and exclusion
  3. 6.3 The solution: Frugal UX and Design Frugality
  4. 6.4 The four pillars of implementation
  5. 6.5 The hidden impact: software-induced obsolescence
  6. 6.6 Behavioural Design: The psychology of sustainability
  7. 6.7 Results: Sustainable design wins across the board
  8. 6.8 Before you optimise, ask if it’s needed — la sobriété numérique
  9. Chapter 6 checkpoint

Chapter 7: Implementation — DevOps, Tools and Automation

  1. 7.1 When sustainability becomes an afterthought
  2. 7.2 Shifting left in the development cycle: catching inefficiencies early
  3. 7.3 The tool landscape: measuring in order to manage
  4. 7.4 Carbon-aware CI/CD: the automated checks
  5. 7.5 From pilot to rollout: how to scale
  6. 7.6 The hidden cost of artificial intelligence
  7. 7.7 The elephant in the server room — the scale of the AI problem
  8. 7.8 Checkpoint: Is your pipeline green?

Chapter 8: Rigorous Measurement — When the Numbers Don’t Add Up

  1. 8.1 When three tools give three different numbers
  2. 8.2 Software Carbon Intensity (SCI): the metric for eliminating emissions
  3. 8.3 Scope 1/2/3 for IT: the problem with the GHG Protocol
  4. 8.4 Reporting and disclosure: talking to external stakeholders
  5. 8.5 Audit and verification: the credibility of the numbers
  6. 8.6 When the numbers lie — the Jevons paradox and the rebound effect
  7. 8.7 The invisible water — WUE and the hidden cost of cooling
  8. Chapter 8 checkpoint

PART IV: CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT — LEADING THE CHANGE

Chapter 9: Change Management for IT Sustainability

  1. 9.1 Why sustainability initiatives fail
  2. 9.2 The change framework: Kotter’s 8 Steps (a pragmatic approach)
  3. 9.3 Stakeholder mapping: speaking the right language to the right people
  4. 9.4 Training and capability building: investing in people
  5. 9.5 Communicating that sustainability is financial efficiency
  6. 9.6 Antipatterns to avoid: when change management fails
  7. 9.7 Synthesis: the seven principles of sustainable change management
  8. 9.7 Checkpoint — Chapter 9

Chapter 10: Governance and accountability

  1. 10.1 “But who’s responsible for IT sustainability?”
  2. 10.2 The tragedy of the commons in IT sustainability
  3. 10.3 The RACI model for sustainability ownership
  4. 10.4 Sustainability Oversight Committee: operational governance
  5. 10.5 Theory of Change for the 2025-2030 roadmap: backward mapping
  6. 10.6 Three-level operational governance
  7. 10.7 Budget and resource allocation: the carbon budget
  8. 10.8 Policy and standards: guardrails for decision-making
  9. 10.9 Chapter 10 checkpoint

Chapter 11: Communicating Sustainability (Internal and External)

  1. 11.1 The risk of greenwashing: between marketing and authenticity
  2. 11.2 Internal communication: building a culture
  3. 11.3 External communication: authenticity
  4. 11.4 Storytelling with numbers
  5. 11.5 Links to previous chapters
  6. 11.6 Checkpoint — Chapter 11

Chapter 12: So, What Now? The First 90 Days Plan

  1. 12.1 Now It’s Just Routine…
  2. 12.2 The Enthusiasm Trap (and How to Avoid It)
  3. 12.3 The 90-Day Plan
  4. 12.4 The ‘Monday Morning’ Checklist
  5. 12.5 Managing the ‘Dip’
  6. 12.6 This Isn’t the End, It’s the Beginning
  7. Checkpoint — Chapter 12

Appendices

Appendix A: Glossary

  1. A
  2. B
  3. C
  4. D
  5. E
  6. F
  7. G
  8. H
  9. I
  10. K
  11. L
  12. M
  13. N
  14. O
  15. P
  16. R
  17. S
  18. T
  19. V
  20. W
  21. Quick acronyms

Appendix B: Templates and Canvases

  1. How to use this appendix
  2. 1. Triple Bottom Line Canvas
  3. 2. Gartner Maturity Grid
  4. 3. SOFT Framework Grid
  5. 4. OKR Canvas TBL
  6. 5. KPI Priority Matrix (2x2)
  7. 6. KPI Dashboard Template
  8. 7. Vendor Scorecard
  9. 8. Business Case Template
  10. 9. Theory of Change Canvas
  11. 10. Stakeholder Mapping (Power/Interest)
  12. 11. RACI Matrix Template
  13. Licences and attribution

Appendix C: SustainableIT.org IT ESG Standards Reference

  1. What is SustainableIT.org
  2. Within IT vs By IT
  3. SIT code structure
  4. Essential metrics (Top 50)
  5. How to use SIT codes in reporting
  6. Reporting examples with SIT codes
  7. References and resources
  8. SIT code roadmap (2025-2026)

Appendix D: Tech Carbon Standard Quick Start

  1. What is the Tech Carbon Standard (TCS)
  2. The 4 TCS categories in detail
  3. Mapping TCS ↔ GHG Protocol
  4. Case Study: Green Web Foundation
  5. JSON Schema for TCS reporting
  6. Quick Start: 1 hour to classify your footprint
  7. TCS vs GHG Protocol: When to use what?
  8. References and resources

APPENDIX E: BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RESOURCES

  1. Books
  2. Academic Papers and Reports
  3. Operational Frameworks
  4. Standards and Guidelines
  5. Tools and Software
  6. Parables and Stories
  7. Advanced Training
  8. Licences and Attributions
  9. Author Contacts

APPENDIX F: ‘BATTLE SCENARIOS’ FLASHCARDS

  1. How to use these cards in a workshop

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