My four-year old son loves airplanes and anything that has to do with flying, and so when I was showing him the image gallery of Vertical Power’s flight system and told him that daddy’s company helps them build it – his eyes lit up.  Daddy cool.

Airplanes - Whoohoo!

Take a test flight with Vertical Power

We use a variant of an agile method for development.  We use Contour to track which requirements are in the current Sprint as well as a relative priority for when we want unimplemented features developed. - Kevin DeVries, lead developer, Vertical Power

In all seriousness, Vertical Power’s products have been called, “The next important advancement in general aviation.”  Their innovative electrical systems for recreational and experimental aircrafts are bringing the modern digital world to the cockpit, enhancing the flight experience for pilots.  You can watch a demo flight and other videos on their site.

Recently, I spoke with Kevin DeVries at Vertical Power and asked him a few questions about his team’s use of Jama Contour and the process they use to design their innovative products.  Kevin brings to Vertical Power’s management team over 15 years experience in design, development and testing of state-of-the-art embedded and real-time processing systems – having worked for Boeing developing advanced systems for the Air Force and other government agencies.  While finishing his Masters in Computer Science, Kevin developed the flight software for the Imager on the Mars Pathfinder.

What are the goals of the projects you’re managing within Contour?  Tell us a little about the products your team is building at Vertical Power.

Vertical Power develops Enhanced Circuit Breakers for the experimental aviation industry.  Our goal is not only to power the different electrical devices on the aircraft, but do so in a manner that reduces pilot workload, increases safety, and simplifies the wiring process.  Our innovative “Flight Mode”, based on the physical environment of the aircraft, allows us to perform actions, provide alerts, display checklists, along with other functionality within a consistent context.

How large are your projects in terms of the number of requirements involved?

The high-end VP-200 system has nearly 800 requirements; the VP-50 model has over 200 requirements.

What development process do you use?

We use a variant of an agile method for development.  We define which requirements are needed for the next release, along with a set of issues to resolve.  A general schedule is laid out for that work and usually within a few months the next release is available for general release.  We use Contour to track which requirements are in the current Sprint as well as a relative priority for when we want unimplemented features developed.

What’s the biggest challenge you and your team face in managing this process?

Many of the requirements, especially for the VP-200 are conceptual.  Vetting out the concepts to actual requirements, not only from a use case perspective, but engineering the integration of the new functionality in the old code base, can be a difficult exercise.

Why did you choose Contour?  How is Jama helping you be more successful?

We chose Contour because of its Web-based interface and data tailoring.  Because our development team is fairly small and agile, we needed to have low overhead when it came to storing and updating requirements (and test cases too!).  The ability to quickly edit, find and update status for the requirements within Contour has allowed us to focus on development, not requirements tracking.

What were you using before Contour to manage requirements?

We had put a significant amount of requirements and conceptual functionality in a Word document.   It quickly became over-bearing to track priorities, requirements for the current Sprint and the changes in such a linear format.  Contour gives us the freedom to manage requirements at an item level and create specification documents and other reports at a summary level as needed.

Bonus question:  What’s your favorite band of all time?

Jethro Tull is my favorite band, and of their albums, “Rock Island” and “Broadsword and the Beast” were instrumental in my enjoyment of Ian’s flute playing.  “Rainbow Blues” and “Bungle in the Jungle” are high on my favorite song list.

Thanks Kevin for your insights and sharing your story with us.  I’ll have to take my son for ice cream tonight and drive him by the air field to watch planes take-off, should land me back on the cool list.  BTW, don’t be surprised if you get a letter in the mail written in blue crayon from a 4-year old named Emmit asking for a VP-200.  What can I say, the kid loves planes.