Building Green Software - Become an Expert

4.5 (6)

·

6 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Learn how the tech industry can reduce carbon emissions and help tackle climate change. If you want to make a difference, join in.

Course overview

Future-Ready, Green Software

The tech industry needs to reduce its carbon footprint, but how? What should we do and how can we convince others? If you care about these questions then this course is for you.


Building green software is a solution to three problems: how to reduce global carbon emissions, how to get tech teams to embrace modern dev and ops best practices, and how to make them more motivated.


Becoming sustainable is not about doing less. It's about doing everything better. Green systems are fundamentally aligned with modernization and increased efficiency. Battling climate change is a great motivator for your teams to embrace modern practices that were designed to reduce resource use and increase resilience, but also help you ship faster and find product market fit.


The techniques of green software were pioneered at Google to help the company build high scale systems that used fewer resources, were cheaper to run, more resilient and easier to change and adapt. Those green techniques can also be used by every other enterprise. On this course, you will learn what they are and why they work.


What is green software?

The Green Software Foundation defines green software as software that minimizes its emissions through operational efficiency, code efficiency, and shifting work in time and place to when and where low carbon power is available. In practice, that means green software is designed to run on renewable power.


To be future-ready, software must take advantage of the unpredictable characteristics of renewably-generated electricity (i.e. it is cheap and abundant at some times and in some places and scarce and expensive at others). That usually means software that can shift work in time to take advantage of sun and wind and is frugal when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing.


Learn the fundamentals of building green software and the impact of the energy transition on tech in an in depth, 6 week online course (1 hour per week) based on Anne's O'Reilly book Building Green Software. The course provides a thorough grounding in the ideas behind building software to survive the energy transition. 


Ideal for anyone who will be leading or supporting others in making systems ready for the future e.g. sales engineers, team leaders, trainers, product owners, architects or CTOs - i.e. your green champions.


Why

In tech, there are major wins from embracing sustainable systems. The best practice techniques for utilizing renewable energy can deliver far, far cheaper power as well as bettter resilience, productivity, and security.


You will learn how to align engineering, operational, and architectural decisions with reduced carbon emissions but also better resilience, performance, security, and development velocity, while lowering your hosting bills.


Course Content

Live lessons on:

How to assess the likely impact of the energy transition on your software systems and judge the opportunities and risks.

How to know where to start with greening your systems.

How to know what to do and when. Part 1 - operations.

How to know what to do and when. Part 2 - demand shifting and shaping.

How to know what to do and when. Part 3 - code and platforms.

Learn about the Green Software Foundation (GSF) Green Software Maturity Matrix from its original author & review and reflect.

Plus: Q&A sessions.


With

The GSF Green Software Maturity Matrix Self Assessment Framework to help you assess where you are and your next steps (Anne is the GSF Maturity Matrix project lead).


Case studies from companies at multiple levels of the maturity matrix.

Who is this course for

01

Senior Architects who need to get up to speed on the principles of green sustainable systems including futureproofing advantages.

02

Experienced Software Engineers who are worried about the risks of the energy transition to their systems & want to take mitigation steps.

03

SREs, Operations and DevOps engineers who want to understand the implications for hosting & platform choices of the energy transition

What you’ll get out of this course

Understand the key factors in sustainability

You will understand the key factors that matter to the sustainability of a system and whether it's likely to survive and thrive or crash and burn in the energy transition.

Understand the pros and cons of operational efficiency vs code efficiency

You'll know where to focus your attention first and why. Running before you can walk is likely to end up giving you a bloody nose.

Understand demand shifting and demand shaping

You will learn where, when, and how to use it and what to do when that demand just won't be shifted.

Understand where your organization sits with respect to green software maturity

The next steps for your systems depend on where they are now and your appetite for leading the pack vs sticking to tried and tested, commodity solutions. By the end of the course, you will understand what tools are out there that you can leverage to deliver on your specific goals

This course includes

6 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

6 in-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

Projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Jan 20—Jan 26

    Jan

    20

    1: The impact, opportunities, and risks of the energy transition

    Mon 1/204:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    How to assess the impact of the energy transition & the strategy to tackle it

    1 item

Week 2

Jan 27—Feb 2

    Jan

    27

    2: Getting started with green systems

    Mon 1/274:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    How to know where to begin

    1 item

Week 3

Feb 3—Feb 9

    Feb

    3

    3: Green Operations

    Mon 2/34:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    What are Green Operations?

    1 item

Week 4

Feb 10—Feb 16

    Feb

    10

    4: Demand Shifting and Shaping

    Mon 2/104:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    What is Demand Shifting and Shaping?

    1 item

Week 5

Feb 17—Feb 23

    Feb

    17

    5: Code efficiency and Green Platforms

    Mon 2/174:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    What is Green Code and How do Platforms Fit In?

    1 item

Week 6

Feb 24

    Feb

    24

    6: The Green Software Maturity Matrix and Reviewing and Reflecting

    Mon 2/244:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    The Green Software Maturity Matrix

    1 item

4.5 (6 ratings)

What students are saying

What people are saying

        Anne is exceptional. Her knowledge and vision of green software provide the necessary perspective to understand, adopt, and implement practices for the operation and efficiency of systems and applications. I have enjoyed every one of Anne's sessions. I cannot say that one has been better than another because they are all spectacular.
Jose Alejandro Sanchez

Jose Alejandro Sanchez

Smart Green IT
        Anne, a co-author of O'Reilly's "Building Green Software," possesses exceptional communication skills, and is widely acknowledged as a global authority in sustainable software development.
Charles Humble

Charles Humble

Former editor-in-chief of InfoQ magazine, author at TheNewStack, editor and writer
        Thanks again for this course. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot from it.
Edgar Post

Edgar Post

Freelance web developer
        Anne has a knack for capturing relevant detail, seeing to the heart of it and drawing out the key lessons.
Greg Hawkins

Greg Hawkins

Former CTO, Starling Bank (Britain's first digital bank)
        A sustainability expert with an incredibly positive attitude! Anne‘s teaching is infectious and you feel smarter and motivated after her sessions.
Kavita Kapoor

Kavita Kapoor

Executive at JustEat, Micro:Bit Foundation, ex London Olympics
        Anne is incredibly enthusiastic, positive, and nice!
Sara Bergman

Sara Bergman

Engineer at Microsoft, co-author of "Building Green Software"
        Anne is a great communicator who is a pleasure to listen to and interact with. She connects the big picture with actionable steps in a thought provoking manner.
Ross Fairbanks

Ross Fairbanks

Independent Platform Engineer

Meet your instructor

Anne Currie

Anne Currie

Anne Currie is part of the leadership of the Linux Foundation's Green Software Foundation. She is co-author of the new O'Reilly book "Building Green Software", which is available on the O'Reilly Safari platform and from all good book retailers. She is the leader of the GSF's Green Software Maturity Matrix project.


She is a tech veteran and startup founder of nearly 30 years experience. Anne worked on highly performant systems like Microsoft Exchange and online conferencing in the 90's, early ecommerce platforms in the '00s, and cutting edge operations in the 10's.


In her spare time she is the author of 8 popular speculative science fiction novels.

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Building Green Software - Become an Expert

Jan25

$1,500

Dates

Jan 20—Feb 24, 2025

Application Deadline

Jan 20, 2025

Course schedule

1-2 hours per week

  • One hour of live training per week for 6 weeks

    4-5pm UK, 11-12pm ET, 5-6pm CET

    1 hour, afternoons (lunchtimes US East) for 6 weeks

  • Projects

    1 hour per week (optional)

    Each week there will be an optional research and thinking project for discussion at the next Q&A session

Free resource

Green Software Maturity Matrix

The Green Software Maturity Matrix (GSMM) is a self-assessment tool to help you judge where your systems are and the next steps you need to take to be greener.


The GSMM is published by the Green Software Foundation where it is an ongoing project. It is available under a CC-BY-4.0 Attribution license (please attribute to the Green Software Foundation). Anne is the project lead and collated the first version.


A fuller text description: https://maturity-matrix.greensoftware.foundation/ The project is open to contributions from everyone.

Get this free resource

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active interactive learning

This course builds on live workshops and discussed and debated projects

Small groups

Small, interactive classes of 4-6

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Building Green Software - Become an Expert

Jan25

$1,500

Dates

Jan 20—Feb 24, 2025

Application Deadline

Jan 20, 2025

$1,500

4.5 (6)

·

6 Weeks