Benefits from modelling and MDD adoption: expectations and achievements

The adoption of Model Driven Development (MDD) promises, in the view of pundits, several benefits. This work, based on the data collected through an opinion survey with 155 Italian IT professionals, aims at performing a reality check and answering three questions: (i) Which benefits are really expected by users of modeling and MDD? (ii) How expectations and achievements differ? (iii) Which is the role of modeling experience on the ability of correctly forecasting the obtainable benefits? Results include the identification of clusters of benefits commonly expected to be achieved together, the calculation of the rate of actual achievement of each expected benefit (varying dramatically depending on the benefit) and the "proof" that experience plays a very marginal role on the ability of predicting the actual benefits of these approaches.