Feedback on how MDE tools are used prior to academic collaboration

Abstract

Several studies in the model-driven engineering (MDE) literature report on companies adopting MDE technologies as a result of long collaborations with academics. However, there are more companies than reported that are already using MDE, even without active MDE researchers partners. Therefore we do not have a clear view of how these industries are using MDE and how it is benefiting them. Presche Legacy is a company that already started using MDE even before collaborating with us. To better understand how MDE is used in such industries and to what extent MDE can solve challenges in this business, we conducted a series of interviews with the employees working with MDE. The findings presented in this paper report a successful integration of MDE tools with their in-house software used in production, challenges encountered, and how they surmounted them. We also discuss how this success story can help other companies benefit from MDE.