Evaluating Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use of CMMN and DCR

TL;DR

This study evaluates how process designers perceive the usefulness and ease of use of CMMN and DCR modeling languages, highlighting the impact of feedback on perceptions and providing insights for language adoption.

Contribution

It compares perceptions of CMMN and DCR using the Technology Acceptance Model and assesses how feedback influences user perceptions in a controlled educational setting.

Findings

Both languages have acceptable perceived usefulness and ease of use.

Feedback can positively influence perceptions despite prior training.

Study provides comparative insights into CMMN and DCR acceptance.

Abstract

Case Management has been gradually evolving to support Knowledge-intensive business process management, which resulted in developing different modeling languages, e.g., Declare, Dynamic Condition Response (DCR), and Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN). A language will die if users do not accept and use it in practice - similar to extinct human languages. Thus, it is important to evaluate how users perceive languages to determine if there is a need for improvement. Although some studies have investigated how the process designers perceived Declare and DCR, there is a lack of research on how they perceive CMMN. Therefore, this study investigates how the process designers perceive the usefulness and ease of use of CMMN and DCR based on the Technology Acceptance Model. DCR is included to enable comparing the study result with previous ones. The study is performed by educating master level students with these languages over eight weeks by giving feedback on their assignments to reduce perceptions biases. The students' perceptions are collected through questionnaires before and after sending feedback on their final practice in the exam. Thus, the result shows how the perception of participants can change by receiving feedback - despite being well trained. The reliability of responses is tested using Cronbach's alpha, and the result indicates that both languages have an acceptable level for both perceived usefulness and ease of use.