Posts Tagged ‘collaboration’

Unleash the power of your online communities with Jama and Jive to innovate faster.

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Jama Software announces the Jama Connector for Jive SBS, a seamless integration between two leading enterprise Web applications used by global organizations to automate the innovation process and take action on great ideas.

Portland, OR (PRWEB) February 17, 2010 — Jama Software, the leading provider of Web-based requirements management software used for managing product innovation, announces the availability of the Jama Connector for Jive SBS.

Jama Connector for Jive SBS

An integrated platform for social product development.

Jama Contour and Jive SBS are complimentary solutions used together to manage the innovation process more effectively, creating a powerful, integrated platform for social product development.

With this unique integration, organizations using Jive SBS for their public and employee communities can now seamlessly push ideas discussed in their communities directly into Jama Contour. Then, they can use Contour to execute on the ideas and manage them through the full product planning and development lifecycle.

“This integration with Jama provides Jive SBS customers more options to capitalize on the ideas being discussed within their Jive communities,” said Ben Kiker, CMO of Jive Software, “By bringing ideation and execution together, companies can ensure the end products they build satisfy the needs of their customers.”

Automate the process. Never lose a great idea again.

Product teams can waste hundreds of hours trying to gather ideas and communicate product plans manually using static documents and email. It’s a nightmare. As more organizations implement social strategies that encourage their customers, partners and employees to participate in the product development process, this “death by documents” problem only magnifies. With the integration of Jive and Jama, organizations can now automate the innovation process and ensure they never lose great ideas. In addition, using Contour, they can capitalize immediately on the specific product features and enhancements their customers want most, ensuring the end products they build deliver real value to their customers.

An idea is worth $0 until you take action. This integrated solution provides a better way to convert great ideas into great products.

Taking open innovation from concept to reality.

“The concept of giving customers a greater voice in the innovation process has been a desirable strategy for years,” said Eric Winquist, co-founder and CEO of Jama Software, “However, historically it was a very manual and document-centric process to implement successfully. The joint solution of Jive + Jama makes the concept of open innovation a reality and automates the data flow within the process, providing greater visibility, control and collaboration for global organizations.”

Key benefits of the integrated solution of Jama Contour and Jive SBS:
- Capture the voice of customers
- Never lose a great idea again
- Automate the innovation process
- Turn ideas into action
- Deliver the right products faster
- Build customer loyalty

Learn more: http://www.jamasoftware.com/jive

Availability
The Jama Connector for Jive SBS is available immediately as an integration add-on to Jama Contour. It is sold as a separate enterprise license with unlimited users and projects, and includes support and maintenance. The Connector requires Jive SBS 4.0 or higher and is compatible with the latest version of Contour 2.9 and higher. A free, full functioning trial of Contour 2.9 along with the Jama Connector for Jive SBS is available upon request:

About Jama Software
At Jama, our mission is to help companies build great products. We’re collaborating with innovative companies across industries, from agile startups to the world’s largest organizations to design new ways to smash information silos, speed innovation and build high quality products. Jama Contour, the leading Web-based solution for social product development and requirements management, is now trusted by thousands of users worldwide managing billions in R&D projects. For more information, Contour videos, Jama customer stories and a free trial, visit http://www.jamasoftware.com

About Jive Software
Jive frees people to engage in open, natural business conversations and workflows that typically are trapped inside of emails, phone calls or meetings. As the leading enterprise-class suite of SBS applications for Global 2000 companies and governments, Jive combines social networking software, collaboration software, and community software into the first solution to effectively manage employees, customers, and partners on a unified platform built for tens of thousands of users and millions of page views.

Media Contact:
John Simpson
Director of Customer Outreach & Marketing
Jama Software
(503) 740-8591
jsimpson (at) jamasoftware.com

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Requirements management meets Agile development – best of both worlds.

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Want to adopt more lightweight agile methods for software development?  But you can’t throw the book out and go pure Agile, because your company needs to maintain proper requirements management practices for product planning, requirements traceability, requirements specification documents and tight change control.  No worries.  The JIRA Connector for Contour brings these two worlds together, by connecting business teams responsible for product requirements and planning with development teams responsible for implementation.

frank_hero

The JIRA Connector for Contour has been selected as Atlassian’s Plugin of the Month for December.  Join Frank Charron, Jama’s development manager, and watch the recorded webinar on how to succeed with proper requirements management on the product planning side of the house, while providing the developers and QA testers the freedom to work within JIRA for agile project management, tasks and defect tracking.

This hybrid approach is proving to be very successful for many organizations, especially those in industries such as medical devices and aerospace where requirements management is critical to meeting compliance standards.

Watch the webinar on Atlassian TV >

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Innovation in Action: 5 reasons why a central hub of product intelligence speeds productivity.

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

In the world of product development and specifically requirements management, you hear a lot about building a “central repository of requirements” or a “single system of record”.  But, why does that matter?  What problem does that solve?  What’s the real value in creating a central hub of product intelligence?

First, let’s define central hub of product intelligence.  What are we really talking about?  Naturally, we think of the data (a.k.a. artifacts or items) – the ideas, feature requests, requirements, design specifications, analysis documents and reports, release plans,  defects etc. – all the data that explains the scope of the product the team is building.  The difference in why we use the word “intelligence” instead of data is that product intelligence expands beyond the artifacts.  It also includes 2 other important related categories of information that support the social nature of the product development process.

  • Conversations – There is an ongoing dialogue throughout the product development lifecycle.  Customers provide feedback.  Analysts capture insights.  Teams discuss requirements.  Managers communicate decisions.  Organizations make commitments.  By including the conversations in context to the requirements and other data, your team will have the complete story of what customers need and understand the discussion for how your team arrived at the requirements you have.  The context is huge.  Without context, you have higher risk for misinterpretation and defects later on.
  • Relationships – Often referred to as traceability (the upstream and downstream relationships between requirements and other items) – the links between the data and the people who own the data are important for understanding all the dependencies and creating a dynamic environment where you can intelligently manage and communicate changes when they occur.  As a practical example, for developers working on detailed functional requirements, having the visibility to look upstream to the high-level business requirements and original feedback from the customer is huge in proving them full context to what they’re on the hook to build.

Why This Matters:

There’s many reasons, but let’s look at these top 5.

1.  Information silos kill productivity – 42% of employees accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week.

2.  Employees and information are fluid – they flow in and out of teams and projects constantly – what info gets lost in transition?

3.  Employees spend 25% of their time just looking for information.

4.  Employees waste 20 minutes a day or more recreating information that already exists.

5.  The total information we’re inundated with grows 66% every year, so this problem will only get bigger over time.

It’s estimated that employees at U.S. companies waste over 5 billion unproductive hours annually just looking for information. – Searching Kills Employee Productivity Blog

It’s such a simple concept – capture all the relevant product intelligence in one place.  Wow, that’s a breakthrough idea, right?  The reality is that it’s difficult to eliminate this problem completely – it affects every organization on some level.  We’ve worked at start-ups with 10 people in the same office and Fortune 100 companies with 75,000+ employees worldwide, and it exists at both.  The question isn’t whether it’s an issue in your company.  The more important question is, “What’s the full impact it’s having o your team and their productivity, and could a better solution make a significant difference?”

Solutions range from using back of the napkin/whiteboard to Word/Excel documents to Wikis to specialized requirements management software.  You may use them all, we do.  The solutions you choose will depend on your organization and the complexity of products you’re building.  One of the decision criteria to use to gauge whether you need specialized software is to determine what degree your team suffers from the Silo Effect.  Borrowing from the infamous Cosmopolitan quiz style, use the list of questions below to determine whether your team is at risk.

Take the Silo Effect Quiz:

[Yes]   [No]  – Do you have duplicated sources of data and multiple versions of requirements spreading across your organization like the Swine flu?

[Yes]   [No]  – Do you have departments that are disconnected and unaware of what the other is doing?  Is the right hand talking to the left hand?  Be honest.

[Yes]   [No]  – Do you operate in an industry with compliance standards, where detailed version history and specific requirements documentation are required for approvals?

[Yes]   [No]  – Do you spend more than 20% of your time hunting around for the latest product information and requirements specs?

[Yes]   [No]  – Is visibility into the product development process limited for stakeholders?  Hint:  if you’ve heard or use the term “black box” in a meeting recently, then mark “yes”.

[Yes]   [No]  – Do you have communication gaps or blind spots related to customer commitments, feature requests or other insights into what your customers need?

[Yes]   [No]  – Do you have frequent transitions of staff in and out of product teams?

[Yes]   [No]  – Do your business analysts match the 27 points of compatibility with your engineers?  Sorry, ignore this one.  We got carried away by the style of these quizzes.

In all seriousness, if you answer “yes” to 2 or more of first 7 questions above, then it’s probably time to evaluate other options to help you eliminate the silos and bring it all together into a central hub that’s accessible, searchable and reportable.

The Productivity Gains from Eliminating the Silo Effect:

  • Save time and money that’s wasted searching for information
  • Reduce costly guesswork, rework and related defects
  • Eliminate redundant research and duplicate projects
  • Shorten ramp-up time of new employees to the team
  • Give complete context to the goals and scope to everyone involved

Keep in mind, having a central hub of product intelligence isn’t the end-all-be-all solution for fueling innovation.  It’s just one capability in a list of many that are required to successfully plan and build products that work.  If you have a broken development process, a central hub won’t solve that.  If your team doesn’t have the right skill sets, it won’t fix that either.  However, what we’ve found over the years is that of the myriad of challenges we face managing product development, bringing all the relevant product intelligence together in a central hub is one of the immediate and practical steps an organization can achieve right away to speed productivity, reduce costs and improve quality.

Moment of Zen:  Sometimes the first step is the most valuable one to take.

Learn more:

See how other companies have benefited from using requirements management software to build their central hub of product intelligence.  Read their stories >

Based on the requirements maturity of your organization and how you scored on the Silo Effect quiz, if you’re in need of a better solution, you may want to  check-out Contour as an option >

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Capturing the RIGHT product requirements isn’t child’s play…but should it be?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

What are the real problems you’re solving for your customers?  Which features will entice customers to enthusiastically buy your product?  Do the ideas being discussed in your online forum match your company’s DNA and product strategy?

These are questions that many people in our industry work, and work, and work, really hard to solve every day.  But, maybe more work (as we normally think about it) isn’t the answer.  Maybe it’s time to play.  Seriously.  Skip the urge to round up the whole team in a stuffy meeting to debate it out, the next time you have uncertainty on your product plans.  Bring in some Legos, take your team outside to play a game or experiment with a few of the creative techniques that others are using to spark new insights, prioritize features and elicit the right requirements.  There’s tons of research on the study of how children learn through play – how it sparks creativity and enhances problem solving skills.  Yet, in the corporate environment, play isn’t a norm.  But, that may be changing.

Think this sounds crazy or too ethereal?  Maybe…maybe not.  Skepticism is understandable, but there are some very smart people at some very successful organizations challenging the myth that play and work don’t belong together.  In fact, they’ll tell you just the opposite, and they have plenty of research and success stories to back it up.  They suggest you should encourage collaborative play at work, and that specific to product development, it can make all the difference between creating the right product or missing the boat completely.  Undoubtedly, one of the toughest challenges of innovation is accurately understanding what customers really want, need and value most (translation:  what they’ll gladly pay you for).  Even when you ask customers, they often struggle to clearly articulate their needs.  So, what do you do?

My goal of this article is provide you 2 groups of links – the first is a list of books and resources with creative techniques to inspire innovation; the other includes resources for mastering requirements fundamentals.  This summary of resources is the intellectual capital of others based on their many years of experience and expertise.  As a point of disclosure, Jama has no financial interest in these resources – so the purchase of books, training courses, etc. have no impact on me or Jama.  The resources I highlight are ones I read, and I respect their content.  This article intentionally excludes software tools (sorry sales team and partners), I wanted it to focus on educational resources.  I obviously believe in the value of tools, but we won’t cover that here.  Since time is a real constraint for all of us, I’ve invested 10 hours pulling together this list – so you only have to spend 10 minutes to learn about them.

Creative Techniques for Sparking Ideas and Uncovering the Unspoken Customer Needs

Resources for Mastering Requirements Fundamentals

In summary, whether you use these resources or others, there’s 5 things that I’ve learned to be true over the years:

1.  There is no silver bullet technique for magically eliciting requirements.  You have to test different techniques, try different interview questions and learn which combination works best for each situation and audience.  And, it will change from project to project.

2.  Customers know what they like and what frustrates them, but they don’t know how to perfectly articulate their needs.  That’s your job to figure out.  You can ask direct questions, but usually the “a-ha” occurs during more authentic conversations and your observation of the unspoken problems they’re experiencing.

3.  Not to be dramatic, but the stakes are high.  The difference between getting requirements right or wrong can make or break your business.  No amount of beautiful design or agile engineering will compensate for the fact that you aren’t solving a real problem customers care about.

4.  The task of understanding the needs of your customers and capturing their collective voice isn’t owned by one person.  It’s a shared responsibility and its valuable to have a high level of collaboration continue throughout process.

5. When work is enjoyable, people perform better.  Thus, there’s merit in having the lines between work and play blurred.  It’s not a coincidence that some of the most successful and innovative companies in the world have high employee retention, fun corporate cultures and loyal customers who love the products they build.  That isn’t by luck, it takes work to have work feel like play.  Enjoy the journey.

For it to flourish, innovation’s future lies in a less disjointed approach – we’re already seeing signs of it becoming more holistic and collaborative.”  – Tim Hulme, business strategist at IDEO and author of The Future of Innovation

I’m sure I’m missing some really valuable resources, so please let me know others you’d like to share, post a comment here or email me.  Thanks to those who shared their insights and resources with me earlier to include in the article.  Feel overwhelmed by the list?  Just commit to trying one new technique this month and take it from there.  Let’s build great products.

For customer success stories, visit: http://www.jamasoftware.com/customers
For more info on Jama, visit: http://www.jamasoftware.com

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Christian Prusia joins Jama Software as Vice President of Sales.

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

PORTLAND, OR – June 3, 2009 – Jama Software, the provider of requirements management software used for managing product innovation, today announces the appointment of Christian Prusia to its executive management team as Vice President of Sales.  Prusia will be responsible for Jama’s global sales strategy and organization, working directly with customers within North America and through Jama’s European channel.  He will also lead the company’s strategic partnerships and business developement activities.

Christian joins Jama with more than fifteen years of sales, product management and executive leadership experience.  Prior to Jama, Christian held positions at technology companies such as M-Six, Enuclia, Pixelworks and InFocus.  In each of his roles, Christian is best known for his strong collaboration and problem solving skills with customers.  Christian has amassed extensive sales experience within the United States, Asia and Europe and has a proven ability to foster long-standing channel and customer relationships across Fortune 100 companies through to nimble start-ups.

“Christian is an accomplished sales professional who brings tremendous focus and energy to Jama and we’re excited to add his leadership to our growing team,” said Eric Winquist, co-founder and CEO of Jama Software.  “Christian is joining Jama at a significant growth stage in our evolution as a company, where despite the tough economy, we continue to demonstrate market momentum and deliver increased value to our growing list of customers around the world.  Christian’s experience, commitment and solid track record for building sales organizations, energizing markets with innovative solutions and driving unparalleled growth will further accelerate Jama to a market leadership position.”

Jama Contour is the industry’s only true Web-based solution for enterprise requirements management.  Contour allows large, global organizations to collaborate on product requirements like never before – helping them accelerate development cycles, increase product quality and compliance, and improve customer satisfaction for the products they build.

“Contour is nothing short of game-changing for any company interested in building great products,” said Christian Prusia, “What CRM software has done for Sales teams in recent years, Jama is doing for Product teams.  With a solution that is affordable, fast to deploy and easy to use, Jama is clearly well-positioned to lead the charge in the collaborative movement that’s changing the Requirements Management category.  I’m excited to be joining the passionate and committed team at Jama.”

About Jama Software

Jama’s mission is to help companies build great products by taking a collaborative approach to requirements management.  Used by thousands worldwide to build sophisticated software applications, products and systems, Contour customers include Intel, Amgen, Bio-Rad, Wells Fargo, Fluid, SMART Technologies, Tectura, Stonesoft, Stratos Global and many others.  For more information, visit www.jamasoftware.com

***

Press Contact:

John Simpson
Director of Customer Outreach & Marketing
jsimpson@jamasoftware.com

Follow Jama on Twitter

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7 Essential Tips to Ensure Success with Requirements Management.

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

As fast as things change in the software development world, it’s amazing how the fundamentals stay true to form.

Innovate or die.  Go Agile or die.  How about just get the freakin’ requirements right or die!  That might be a more accurate perspective that many development managers are taking today.  Especially during this tough economy, taking a “back to basics” approach can prove to be a good strategy.

Recently, we had an opportunity to speak with a few well respected consultants in the field of requirements management, including Karl Wiegers and James and Suzanne Robertson, and we were reminded of just how important it is to nail the fundamentals of the requirements management process – from writing good requirements to managing change requests  to prioritizing new features and requirements.  Whichever product development methodology or process you’re using, it’s critical to nail the fundamentals.

Requirements Management Tips - Download Guide

Download Requirements Management Tips

To help with this effort, we put together a new whitepaper on the 7 essential tips to ensure success with requirements management, along with a few free templates you can use right away to help you with your requirements process.  For some, these tips might be new. For others, these tips will serve as a  good reminder of the fundamentals that are easy to lose sight of during the heat of a project. You can download the requirements management resources directly from our web site.   Feel free to share these with others and add links your favorite templates.

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Building the Web 2.0 enterprise – The McKinsey Global Survey Results are out.

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Not surprising, companies are using more Web 2.0 tools and technologies now than they were last year. The latest survey results from The McKinsey Quarterly on “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise” illustrate the growing investments in Web 2.0 technologies.

The shifts that are occurring are in how and where Web 2.0 tools are being applied. Previously, Web 2.0 tools were viewed as “experimental” projects, but now companies are adopting them as part of broader business practices, using them to manage core business initiatives such as fostering collaboration across the company and developing products or services.

One of the conclusions the report draws is that, “Successful companies already use Web 2.0 for business applications such as communicating with customers and suppliers; soon they may use it to drive innovation.”

This is a trend we’re seeing first-hand at Jama. There’s a growing need at enterprise organizations to connect up the different tools where product ideas, features and discussions are captured and to sync up these different sources together with the tools, such as Contour, that teams use to plan and develop their product releases.

To get the full report, go here: “McKinsey Global Survey Results: Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise”.

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Social networking is not innovation management.

Monday, June 30th, 2008

There’s been much attention recently given to social networking and collaboration as it applies to the business process of innovation. It’s fueled by a growing crop of companies that are adopting a more open innovation model and inviting their communities of customers, partners and employees to participate in the process of sharing ideas, discussing them and voting on their favorites.

The potential benefits to a company can be huge:

  • Greater alignment with customers
  • Faster product development cycles
  • Reduced R&D costs

Dell’s Ideastorm and Starbuck’s “My Starbucks Idea” are two well-publicized examples of online customer communities designed to foster collaboration around new product ideas. Both of these brands have successfully grown web sites with hundreds of thousands of participants and ideas. So, when given the platform to speak up, people are more than willing to participate.

Sounds like a windfall, right? Build a community site and poof you’re the next great innovative company…not so fast…

Social networking alone isn’t innovation management. Ideation is an important step, but it is just the front-end of the innovation funnel. This growing trend of online idea sharing is exciting but it’s raising some questions into how to best apply the valuable (but unstructured) input from customer communities and social networks into the complex product development process:

  • Are the most popular ideas the most lucrative ones for the company to pursue?
  • If misapplied, can the wisdom of crowds actually lead an organization to the wrong decision?
  • Does the input from the community site replace traditional R&D?
  • How can internal product teams effectively connect the ideas and feedback from the community to the other downstream steps of the product planning and development process?

Here’s a recent article that highlights some of the challenges:
http://www.innovationtools.com/Articles/EnterpriseDetails.asp?a=332

Our opinion: Whereas the focus recently has been on the creation of customer communities, we believe the focus now will naturally shift to solving the bigger challenge of how to best manage this new channel of customer input and apply it to the internal process of developing new products. The companies that get this right will be the ones that realize the greatest financial benefits.

What’s your opinion? Post a comment and let us know your thoughts.

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1.7 for single users and unlimited read only

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

We just released our 1.7 for single users which comes with a free named license and unlimited read only access. It’s only been one day and already we’re getting a huge response. This option is a great way to get started with no hassles. Just download Contour, install and your off and running.

This release is very exciting for us, most notably for the subtle and indirect changes.

We have a new logo, which I think is a huge improvement. Something about the circle captures our belief, that the whole team is in it together. Can you feel the love? Also, and this isn’t so small, we have a new web site. The site itself is worth perusing, there’s actually a great paper called “Requirements Redefined” that is based on the premise that Requirements Management is valuable but a pain in the @*s#!, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on it.

Contour itself has a much improved installation, one button….well almost. There’s a “what’s new” that tracks events in the system and then displays them when you log in, so you can see who did what and when. We also did some color tweaking and UI cleanup.

It’s good to get a release out the door but I’m always looking towards the next release. We have so many cool ideas bouncing around, it’s hard to know what to tackle first. We’ve set up a “backstage” site where the public, as well as current customers, can post support questions, comments or feature requests. We’ll also be posting our ideas looking for feedback. I hope you’ll join us there, the more the merrier.

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