Who Cares About Software Process Modelling? A First Investigation About the Perceived Value of Process Engineering and Process Consumption

When it comes to designing a software process, we have experienced two major strategies. Process engineers can either opt for the strategy in which they focus on designing a process using an artefact model as backbone or, on the other hand, they can design it around activities and methods. So far, we have first studies that directly analyse benefits and shortcomings of both approaches in direct comparison to each other, without addressing the questions relevant to process engineers and which implications the selection of a particular design strategy has on the process consumption. We contribute a first controlled investigation on the perceived value of both strategies from the perspectives of process engineers and process consumers. While our results underpin the artefact-oriented design strategy to be an advantageous instrument for process engineers, process consumers do not evidently care about the selected design strategy. Furthermore, our first investigation performed in an academic environment provides a suitable empirical basis, which we can use to steer further replications and investigations in practical environments.