Digital Clean Up: This. Is. How.

  Agile   Sustainability  

A version of this post was originally posted on the Agile Alliance.

As agile practitioners, minimizing waste is part of our DNA. But while we apply lean thinking to products and processes, we often overlook a growing source of waste: our digital footprint.

In a world increasingly dependent on cloud storage, it’s easy to assume that storing data online is eco-friendly. After all, we’re saving paper, right? But “the cloud” is not weightless. It lives in massive data centers—physical buildings filled with machines that consume enormous amounts of energy and require cooling systems to prevent overheating. Every file we store contributes to that load.

Now zoom out: think about the number of digital files stored by your family, your company, your community. Suddenly, what feels small becomes part of a much bigger issue.

One Engineer’s Eye-Opening Cleanup
Allison Lazarz, a Software Test Engineer at Dealer.com, shared how she tackled digital waste during an internal "HIP sprint" (hardening, innovation, planning). Inspired by her commitment to sustainability in her personal life, Allison decided to examine her team’s log data stored in AWS Cloudwatch.

She found more than 1,900 logs with no retention policy—and some were multiple terabytes in size. Her solution? Write a script to identify the biggest files and …

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