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When Jira® and Confluence® Are Not Enough for Complex Product Development

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Product development is rapidly changing. In this era of constant market disruption, development teams are under unyielding pressure to improve quality and get products to market faster. To meet these quality demands and improve speed to market, development teams are focusing on improving one of the most vital steps in their process: requirements management.

But even with greater emphasis on requirements management, siloed teams that are using their own specialized tools can create confusion across the development cycle — and lead to waste and delays.

This post will walk through some of the issues modern development teams are facing and explore the solutions, but for the full breakdown, please check out our webinar, “When Jira and Confluence Are Not Enough: Optimizing Agile Requirements Management for Enterprise Software Development.”

Why Requirements Management?

Several key factors are leading the shift toward greater attention to requirements management:

  • Intelligent devices such as autonomous vehicles continue to disrupt the marketplace and create both software challenges and risks.
  • Devices connected to people are fueling the ongoing digital transformation, which leads development teams away from a document-based approach and toward more modern solutions. This move, if not properly thought through and executed, can result in disjointed and misaligned teams across the development lifecycle.
  • The trend toward more product development governance produces greater regulatory pressure.
  • The push for increased speed to market has led to a drive for process modernization and the adoption of Agile platforms such as Atlassian® Jira®.

But all of this change and modernization results in increased complexity. Complicated development cycles need automation and more modern tools. Work must be coordinated across hardware and Agile software teams using different tools and methodologies. Connected products introduce security risks, mandating increased due diligence across requirements, design, and testing. Faster iterations and evolving solutions make regulatory compliance more difficult and time consuming.

A recent study from Project Management Institute revealed that the second most common reason for product failure is poor requirements management. In addition, 51% of program funds are wasted due to poor requirements management.

Software development teams that want to remain competitive need to transform work processes and adopt new solutions. Jira, Confluence®, and other single-stack tools, while valuable, are often not enough to ensure compliance, quality, cost control, and speed to market in complex product development. Plus, teams also need robust requirements management solutions and integrations across the toolchain.

Learn how enterprise companies can remain competitive in a start-up market by scaling Agile practices across the organization in this blog post.

Integrating Best-of-Breed Solutions Across the Toolchain

For many years, having a single stack solution seemed like the best way forward for product development teams. Large corporations invested heavily in these single stacks, believing that with everything in one place, teams would have fewer silos and easier reporting. However, these single-stack solutions were never intended to serve all functions for all teams.

It’s important for teams to have access to the tools that best support their specific needs. Best-of-breed tools support distinctive and varied needs for specialization. Focusing on depth rather than breadth can help optimize key stages of software development and delivery, as well as unburden the single-stack tools. Investing heavily in one specialized tool means optimizing a key piece of the process of development.

However, problems arise when development teams can’t communicate across the toolchain. Teams end up duplicating work, wasting time, or focusing efforts in the wrong place.

A fragmented toolchain doesn’t need to cause waste, communication breakdowns, or confusion. Integrating the toolchain is key.

Connecting Jama Software to the Product Development Toolchain

The first step in improving the product development process is to take control of requirements management. Jama Connect makes it easy for teams to define, align, and execute on what they need to build, reducing lengthy time cycles, wasteful rework, and effort spent on proving compliance. Jama Software’s unique combination of core capabilities solves some of the most challenging issues modern product development teams face.

Jama Connect offers:

  • Live traceability
  • Ease of use
  • Change management across engineering teams
  • Robust collaboration and decision tracking
  • Streamlined compliance reporting
  • Test management

Jama Software provides a purpose-built, integrated solution designed to scale as your business grows. It’s a best-in-breed requirements management solution that allows teams to use the solutions and processes best suited for their jobs across the ALM ecosystem.

TaskTop Integration with Jama Connect

The second step in getting control of complex product development is integrating the toolchain. Through the extended solution with our integration partner TaskTop, product and engineering teams can connect product development through execution to ensure everyone is working off the most current requirements and stakeholders are aligned and engaged.

TaskTop allows all teams and silos to use the specialized tools that are necessary for their particular piece of product development. By integrating solutions across the toolchain, TaskTop automates communication and brings the work to the team in its own specialized tool.

Toolchain integration through TaskTop will:

  • Bridge silos
  • Eliminate duplicate data entry
  • Provide model-based integration

See how Jama Software’s integration solutions can help ensure traceability and alignment across the product development lifecycle.

A new era requires new tools and new processes. While Jira, Confluence, and other tools are highly effective in the right environment and for the right purpose, they aren’t always sufficient across the entire development cycle. Through robust requirements management with Jama Connect and toolchain integration with TaskTop, development teams can meet the demands of users, stakeholders, and the marketplace.

To learn more about how Jama and TaskTop can help your team meet market demands for complex product development, view our webinar “When Jira and Confluence Are Not Enough: Optimizing Agile Requirements Management for Enterprise Software Development.”

Jama Software
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