Tag Archive for: Collaboration & Alignment

Tag Archive for: Collaboration & Alignment

Empowering Complex Development with Responsible AI

In this blog, we preview a section of our recent Whitepaper – To read it in its entirety, visit “Empowering Complex Development with Responsible AI”

Empowering Complex Development with Responsible AI

Streamlining Efficiency and Compliance with Scalable Solutions

Product and system development is entering a new era, driven by AI innovation. Highly regulated industries like aerospace, automotive, medical devices, and financial services are facing unprecedented challenges such as escalating regulatory scrutiny in some cases, rising product complexity, and the relentless demand to accelerate time-to-market. Navigating these challenges requires a balance of innovation, compliance, and efficiency.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to demonstrate its potential in requirements management by automating manual processes, enhancing decision-making, and streamlining compliance. However, harnessing AI’s full potential requires a commitment to responsible AI practices, ensuring transparency, fairness, and security.

This whitepaper explores how AI is shaping the future of product development, offering insights into its applications, best practices for governance, and the role of Jama Software and AWS in delivering scalable, secure, and responsible AI solutions.

RELATED: Write Better Requirements with Jama Connect Advisor™

Today’s Systems Have Become More Complex

Systems of Systems (SoS)

  • A System of Systems (SoS) is a collection of independent systems, integrated into a larger system that delivers unique capabilities
  • It is difficult to produce accurate predictive models of all emergent behaviors, so global SoS performance is difficult to design
  • Testing and verifying upgrades to a SoS is difficult and expensive (sometimes prohibitively) due to scale, complexity, and constant evolution

AI Applications in Complex Product Development

1. Challenges in Product Development

Complex product development demands businesses to manage an increasing number of variables, such as system interconnectivity, regulatory requirements, and shorter development
cycles. This intensifies the need for precise requirements management tools.

Modern systems, such as self-driving cars, embody system of systems architectures, integrating hardware, software, AI functionality, and cybersecurity. While this creates immense innovation opportunities, the complexity of these systems presents significant challenges:

  • Predicting behaviors accurately
  • Designing test frameworks for integration
  • Scaling verification and validation processes efficiently

These challenges are amplified as the systems grow in complexity and sophistication. Accurately predicting behaviors becomes increasingly critical as interconnected components interact
in unpredictable ways, potentially leading to performance issues, safety concerns, or unintended outcomes. Addressing this requires advanced modeling and simulation techniques capable
of capturing the intricate relationships across subsystems.

Designing effective test frameworks for integration presents its own hurdles. Comprehensive testing must account for the diverse interfaces, software dependencies, and hardware configurations found in modern systems. Without a robust plan, teams risk delays, inefficiencies, and gaps in system validation that can lead to compliance failures or product recalls.

Scaling verification and validation processes to match the demands of high-complexity systems also requires significant innovation. Traditional, manual methods are often unable to keep pace,
resulting in slowed time-to-market and increased resource consumption. Automated solutions offer a scalable pathway, providing traceability, consistency, and efficiency needed to manage
these complex operations effectively.

Ultimately, organizations must balance innovation with rigorous oversight to address these challenges while ensuring safety, reliability, and compliance. Adopting tools designed for enhanced requirements management, streamlined traceability, and automated testing is paramount for achieving these goals in an evolving technological landscape.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: How to Select the Right Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

2. AI Solutions to the Challenges

AI-driven solutions are addressing these challenges in profound ways:

Automating Requirements Validation

  • AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to verify that project requirements are complete, precise, and testable
  • By identifying ambiguous requirements early, businesses reduce the risk of failures
  • Automated test case generation cuts time and ensures that all requirements are tested

AI-driven solutions are fundamentally transforming the way businesses address traditional challenges in requirements management and validation. Through the use of natural language processing (NLP), AI automates the validation of project requirements by ensuring they are complete, precise, and testable. This advanced capability allows ambiguities or inconsistencies within requirements to be identified early in the development process. By addressing potential issues proactively, businesses can significantly reduce the risks associated with failures, enhancing overall project efficiency and success.

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

  • AI tools can help map requirements to stringent regulatory standards in sectors such as aerospace, defense, automotive, and medical devices
  • Automated monitoring ensures continuous compliance throughout the product lifecycle, minimizing risks

Ensuring regulatory compliance is critical for organizations operating in highly regulated industries such as aerospace, defense, and medical devices. AI tools can play a pivotal role in this process by mapping requirements to stringent regulatory standards, ensuring that all necessary conditions are met without manual oversight. These tools offer automated monitoring, which enables continuous compliance throughout the product lifecycle. By reducing the likelihood of human error and streamlining the regulatory process, businesses can minimize risks and maintain adherence to evolving standards, ultimately supporting the success and longevity of their projects.

Accelerating Development Cycles

  • Predictive analytics can enable immediate impact assessments of change requests, minimizing rework and speeding up delivery timelines

Predictive analytics play a crucial role in accelerating development cycles by enabling immediate impact assessments of change requests. This capability minimizes rework, allowing teams to address potential issues swiftly and efficiently. By streamlining workflows and reducing delays, organizations can significantly speed up delivery timelines, ensuring that projects are completed on schedule while maintaining high-quality standards.

Enhancing Collaboration

  • Distributed teams benefit from AI-powered traceability that links requirements, tests, and design components in real time

Efficient collaboration is critical for success, especially for distributed teams. Jama Connect enhances collaboration by providing AI-powered traceability that seamlessly links requirements, tests, and design components in real time. By fostering better communication and streamlining the sharing of critical project information, Jama Connect empowers teams to work more cohesively, reducing misunderstandings and improving overall productivity.

TO READ THIS ENTIRE WHITEPAPER, VISIT: Empowering Complex Development with Responsible AI

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Empowering Project Owners in the AEC Industry

Managing construction projects can feel like trying to juggle a dozen tasks at once while standing on a tightrope. For project owners in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, the stakes are even higher. Misalignment among stakeholders, inflated risk costs, and compliance challenges can derail even the best-laid plans, causing delays, inflated costs, and unnecessary headaches.

But what if there were a way to simplify the complexity and take control? That’s where Jama Connect comes in. Designed to tackle the toughest challenges in construction project management, Jama Connect gives project owners the tools they need to streamline processes, align teams, and keep projects on track.

In this Features in Five session, we’re featuring a must-watch video with Michelle Solis, Solutions Architect at Jama Software. She breaks down the persistent challenges facing project owners and demonstrates how Jama Connect empowers teams with clarity, accountability, and confidence. Whether you’re managing public infrastructure, real estate developments, or any large-scale project, this is your opportunity to discover smarter solutions for project success. Read on to learn more!

 

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Michelle Solis: Hi there. I’m Michelle Solis, a solutions architect at Jama Software. In this Features and Five video, we break down real problems the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry is facing, and how smart teams are solving them. Today, we’re speaking directly to project owners. Whether you’re a public agency, real estate developer, or infrastructure lead, if you’re responsible for project outcomes, this episode is for you.

We’re going to cover three of the most persistent challenges owners face: misalignment across stakeholders, risk-inflated bids, lack of accountability and compliance exposure, and, more importantly, how Jama Connect helps you get ahead of them.

Managing construction projects isn’t easy, and owners face a range of interconnected challenges that can derail success. These challenges include: 

  • Misalignment across stakeholders: When teams interpret requirements differently, it leads to design errors, miscommunication, rework, RFIs, and change orders. Without a unified system to manage and communicate requirements, projects are prone to scope creep and wasted resources.
  • Risk-inflated bids: During bidding, contractors often pad their numbers due to unclear expectations. This results in risk premiums, vague assumptions and inconsistent comparisons, forcing owners to choose between suboptimal options and inflating costs.
  • Lack of accountability: Without clarity on who owns specific requirements, you’re left exposed to safety risk, regulatory penalties, and liability due to non-compliance. Invisible accountability creates confusion, finger-pointing, and increased project risk. Together, these problems affect your ability to deliver projects on time, within budget, and with confidence. Addressing them requires a solution that brings clarity, alignment, and accountability to every phase of the project.

RELATED: Five Key Challenges AEC Project Owners Face and How to Solve Them with Jama Connect

Solis: Jama Connect empowers project owners with comprehensive solutions to streamline construction projects, reduce risk, and improve outcomes. Here’s how it addresses key challenges.

  1. Stakeholder alignment: By providing a shared source of truth for all requirements, from design to regulatory to contractual, Jama Connect ensures that everyone is on the same page. Requirements are traceable, version controlled, and validated, allowing teams to see who authored a requirement, what changed and why. This proactive alignment helps catch gaps early and prevent costly mistakes.
  2. Clear scope for competitive bids: Jama Connect eliminates ambiguity during the bidding process by clearly defining scope and acceptance criteria. This clarity gives contractors the confidence to price jobs accurately, reduce inflated risk premiums, and ensure you’re comparing apples to apples. The result; faster bids, competitive pricing, and a smarter use of project budgets.
  3. Built-in accountability: Accountability is made seamless with Jama Connect. Every requirement is assigned to an owner and tracked in real-time, ensuring comprehensive oversight. Requirements are also linked to compliance standards, contracts, or codes, providing audit-ready documentation whenever needed. If issues arise, traceability tools help resolve them quickly and transparently. Together, these capabilities equip you with the visibility, clarity, and confidence you need to deliver successful construction projects.

RELATED: AEC Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements and Compliance Management Solution for Complex Projects

Solis: Let’s quickly look at Jama Connect in a project owner dashboard. Jama Connect dashboards are a visual tool to help with the three problems we just explored.

  1. Accountability. This bar graph shows us who’s assigned to each of these stakeholder requirements. If multiple PMs are working a project, you can manage them all in one place.
  2. Stakeholder alignment. This list of owner requirements is easily configured to show the data owners might be tracking daily. We have the priority column that shows us how the requirement has been categorized and the percent of downstream completed requirements. Owners are able to see all of this information in one place.
  3. Clear scope. This last widget is a pie chart that separates the project requirements by their status. I can quickly see which are being worked on, have cost implications or schedule delays. These are all interactive, so I can click into the section like the schedule delay and see the specific information for those requirements.

Here’s the takeaway for project owners. Construction is complex, but you don’t have to lose sleep over scope creep, inflated cost, or compliance headaches. Jama Connect gives you the visibility, control, and confidence you need to deliver successful projects from planning to handover. Thank you for watching this demonstration of how Jama Connect empowers project owners in the AEC industry. To learn more about optimizing your projects, visit our website at jamasoftware.com. If you’re already a Jama customer, your success manager, or Jama software consultant, can provide you additional insights. Together, we can build better outcomes.

To view more Jama Connect Features in Five topics, visit:
Jama Connect Features in Five Video Series

Leveraging Jama Connect® and Jira for Enhanced Requirements

In this blog, we recap our recent whitepaper, “Leveraging Jama Connect and Jira for Enhanced Requirements Management” – Click HERE to download it in its entirety.

Leveraging Jama Connect and Jira for Enhanced Requirements

Think you can manage your complex software requirements with Word and Jira alone? Think again.

In software development, teams need tools that enable them to manage requirements, ensure traceability, and adapt to changes without losing sight of their goals. Many companies rely solely on Atlassian Jira, often paired with Word or Excel, to handle requirements and track development tasks.

While Jira is highly effective for tracking implementation progress, it lacks essential features for managing requirements throughout the entire development lifecycle.

The limitations of using Jira alone can lead to costly setbacks, such as rework, missed deadlines, delayed rollouts, and compromised quality. These challenges stem from a lack of traceability, inefficient review processes, limited project visibility, and an incomplete definition of the system.

This eBook explores these issues and introduces a solution: integrating Jama Connect with Jira. Jama Connect enhances requirements management, enables Live Traceability™, streamlines reviews, and provides real-time insight into development progress.

Together, Jama Connect and Jira empower teams to achieve better software development outcomes

1. The Limitations of Using Jira Alone for Requirements Management

Lack of Traceability

The challenge of managing requirements with flat or disparate files like Word or Excel is significant. Teams that use these tools alongside Jira often struggle to keep requirements aligned with development tasks. Manual traceability in these formats is resource-intensive, prone to errors, and leaves significant gaps in coverage.

Without proper traceability, teams have limited visibility into their project’s true status, which can lead to costly rework and project delays. In fact, lack of traceability is one of the leading causes of negative project outcomes. When you can’t see how requirements connect to development and testing, the project suffers, and costs escalate — especially if defects are discovered later in the lifecycle. According to research done by INCOSE, the cost of fixing a defect can be up to 110 times more expensive if it’s found during validation rather than early on.

Jama Connect’s Live Traceability solves this problem by creating a digital thread through every level of development, from customer needs to verification and validation. This digital thread ensures that all requirements are covered and connected to development tasks, giving teams confidence that they’re meeting their goals and satisfying customer needs. Later in this paper, we’ll explore the many ways Live Traceability can dramatically improve your development process.

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

Inefficient Requirement Reviews

Reviewing requirements using Word documents can be frustrating and inefficient. A business requirements document often contains hundreds or even thousands of requirements. Teams must wait for the entire document to reach a draft state before circulating it for feedback. Stakeholders then provide comments through a combination of Word’s review features and emails, creating a fragmented and time-consuming process.

In this scenario, the burden falls on the business analyst to compile feedback, chase down reviewers, and manage multiple rounds of review cycles. This process is not only inefficient but also risks missed feedback or inconsistencies, as it’s difficult to track changes from one review cycle to the next.

Jama Connect’s Review Center streamlines this process. It allows teams to break down reviews into manageable parts and send specific sections out for feedback. Instead of waiting for an entire document to be finalized, teams can initiate reviews iteratively. The Review Center also automatically creates a baseline at the start of each review, providing a clear record of the requirements’ state before any feedback or changes are made. This reduces review cycles and accelerates consensus, saving valuable time and resources.

Business Analysts and Stakeholders are Frustrated

The lack of an end-to-end tool connecting stakeholders, business analysts, and software development teams is a major gap. Traceable Agile™ in Jama Connect is the answer. With Traceable Agile, there is no change for software teams and the development process is supported for both business analysts and stakeholders. Learn more here >>

2. The Value of Creating a Digital Thread with Jama Connect and Jira

Providing Development Insight

Jira is a powerful tool for tracking development tasks, prioritizing work, and managing sprint schedules. However, it lacks comprehensive visibility into whether requirements are actually being met. If development tasks, such as user stories, aren’t directly linked to requirements, it’s impossible to know how close the project is to meeting customer needs.

Unlinked development tasks open risks like scope creep, rogue development, or unintentional changes that affect other parts of the system. In these cases, teams may spend time on tasks that aren’t aligned with the project’s core requirements, leading to wasted resources and delayed timelines.

By integrating Jama Connect with Jira, teams can bridge this gap. Jama Connect retains the requirements context, while Jira provides insight into development progress. Each team can work within its tool of choice while sharing critical information, such as real-time updates on task status. This integration enables project managers to see how development is progressing against requirements, ensuring that every task is necessary, and every requirement is covered.

Only Jama Connect Delivers a Digital Thread that is Measurable and Live Traceable Across Best-of-Breed Tools Jama Connect’s digital thread connects best-of-breed tools like Jira and Cameo and enables you to auto detect risk early across all engineering disciplines. This has been shown to enable proven improvement to the product development process.

Clear Definition of System Requirements

A common misconception about Agile is that formal requirements documentation is unnecessary. Some teams try to decompose customer needs into user stories in Jira, thinking that’s sufficient. However, this approach has limitations. User stories describe specific interactions or functions from a user’s perspective, but they don’t provide the comprehensive requirements needed for a full system definition.

Traceable Agile ensures that every requirement and feature is documented, versioned, and kept up to date, providing a clear, evolving definition of the system. Unlike user stories, requirements offer a functional description of what the system must do, ensuring alignment with customer needs. With Jama Connect, you get a single source of truth for the system, one that evolves over time and reflects the current state of requirements, while also keeping a record of every change that’s made.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Companies Choose Agile for Speed, Jama Connect Delivers Speed AND Quality

Jama Connect solves common challenges with Agile initiatives, such as maintaining standards compliance, coordinating hardware and software teams, managing defects, reducing rework, and ensuring customer quality. Traceable Agile speeds the flow of software and hardware development and maintains the current and historical state of development quality to auto-detect issues early. Watch the demo >>

TO READ THIS DATASHEET IN ITS ENTIRETY, VISIT:
Leveraging Jama Connect and Jira for Enhanced Requirements

Jama Connect Features in Five: Jama Connect Interchange – What Sets Us Apart

Learn how you can supercharge your systems development process! In this blog series, we’re pulling back the curtains to give you a look at a few of the powerful features in Jama Connect… in about five minutes.

In this Features in Five Integration Series video, Mario Maldari, Director of Solutions Architect at Jama Software – will demonstrate the Jama Connect to Jira integration via Jama Connect Interchange™.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Mario Maldari: Hello. My name is Mario Maldari and I’m the Director of solution architecture here at Jama Software. Today we’ll be discussing the Jama Connect to Jira integration via our Jama Connect Interchange. We’ll be focusing on some specific advantages and differentiators that our integration provides for our clients. These advantages provide added value to our integration and allow our clients to better meet the needs of their process and ultimately speed up their development time with improved quality.

Let’s start in Jama Connect’s Live Trace Explorer™ and analyze gaps in coverage between system requirements and user stories. We can easily drill down into the trace view and identify gaps within our coverage. Once the gaps are identified, we can create new user stories to satisfy the coverage and improve our traceability score. Let’s go ahead and do that.

You’ll now see the gap in coverage for this particular item has been satisfied and is no longer being flagged by the tool. One unique aspect of our Jira integration is that a user can configure the synchronization interval. It can range from 15 seconds to up to 24 hours. This built-in flexibility allows for the integration to be customized to meet the needs of many different process flows and organizational needs.

RELATED: Jama Connect Interchange™ for Software and Product Development Teams: Live Traceability Realized

Maldari: Navigating back to the user story that we just created in Jama Connect, you will now see an integration URL has been populated to the corresponding user story that was just created in Jira. In this case, the synchronization was quick, 15 seconds. Any subsequent update made to the item in Jira will synchronize and reflect back in Jama Connect with the same frequency. This way the two tools are always kept in sync and there is essentially no lag time.

Another major differentiation that our integration provides is the ability to create conditional rules for the integration. This allows users to be very specific about conditions for the creation and synchronization. They do not have to worry about the burden and overhead of sinking their entire project. They can be very specific regarding the conditions.
As an example, imagine a process that dictates that a new user story in Jama Connect will only get created in Jira when the Jira status in Jama Connect is set to do. This provides the requirements manager a level of process control where they can review the user stories and determine which ones and when they should be created in Jira.

In the Jama Connect Interchange configuration, if I navigate to the creation rule tab, I can see that there is a rule for user story creation. It’s configured to be triggered when the Jira status is set to do. I can add any number of rules and conditions based on my particular process flow. This allows for customization at a lower level and does not require the entire project to be synchronized.
Now let’s see how this works in Jama Connect. Utilizing Jama Connect’s List View, I can see which stories do not currently have a Jira status field set. I can review these and determine that I would like them to be created and synchronized to my Jira project. I can utilize the bulk edit feature and set the status for multiple items at a time.

RELATED: How to Achieve Live Traceability™ with Jira® for Software Development Teams

Maldari: Because of the conditional rule I have set in my Jama Connect Interchange settings, all three of these user stories will be created in Jira and participate in synchronization. You will see that the Jira URL has now been populated and the corresponding item has been created in Jira. This is just an example, but you can imagine how this flexibility can be applied across your projects and specific to your attributes.

Another important distinction to note is how relationships in Jama Connect and Jira are maintained through the integration. This allows for a more holistic, contextual view of how requirements and user stories relate outside the direct linkage of the integration. For example, as a developer in Jira, I may want to have a reference to how the requirements relate to upstream and downstream links. By choosing a relationship type and performing a field mapping, I’m able to get this reference to display as web links in Jira. As a developer in Jira, this allows me to get a sense for the overall context of the traceability.

In this example, a developer will see a user story come into their queue, and they will have a web link reference to the upstream and downstream requirements in Jama Connect. This provides them with additional context while working on developing the user story. They are even able to navigate directly to those items in Jama Connect for further detail.

One of our core philosophies at Jama Software is making our tools easy to use and therefore easy to adopt and maintain. Our integration to Jira is no exception. The user interface is point and click and the field mapping has intelligence built in that does most of the work for you. It’s also worth noting that we do not require you to be a Jama Connect administrator to set up, configure, and utilize our integration. Jama Connect Interchange also provides detailed event logging, which allows IT teams to monitor events and current status of the configured integrations.

As you can see, the Jama Connect to Jira integration offers teams a robust set of features with configuration options to meet various organizational needs. This flexibility and ease of use combined with specific well-thought-out functionality sets us apart from other requirement tools in Jira integrations. To find out more about our Jama Connect to Jira integration through our Jama Connect Interchange, please reach out to your customer success manager or visit our website today at jamasoftware.com

To view more Jama Connect Features in Five topics, visit:
Jama Connect Features in Five Video Series

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Requirements Management

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Requirements Management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere – from healthcare, to finance, to customer service – the integration of AI into various business processes has become a game-changer. One area where AI’s impact is particularly profound is in requirements management, a key process in product, systems, and software development.

Effective requirements management is crucial for the success of any project, ensuring that the final deliverables align with stakeholders’ needs and expectations. By leveraging AI, organizations can enhance their requirements management processes, leading to improved project outcomes, increased efficiency, and reduced risks.

Understanding Requirements Management

Requirements management involves the process of gathering, analyzing, documenting, and managing the needs and requirements of stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle. It ensures that all project requirements are clearly defined, tracked, and verified, minimizing the chances of misunderstandings and errors. Traditional requirements management, while effective, can be time-consuming and prone to human error. This is where AI steps in, offering innovative solutions to streamline and enhance the process.

RELATED: How the EARS Notation Supports Effective Requirements Management and Live Traceability™

The Role of AI in Requirements Management

  1. Automated Requirements Elicitation: AI-powered tools can automatically gather requirements from various sources, such as emails, documents, and meeting notes. Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms can analyze text data to extract relevant information, saving time and ensuring that no critical requirements are overlooked.
  2. Intelligent Document Analysis: AI can analyze and interpret complex documents, identifying key requirements and relationships between them. This capability allows for more accurate and comprehensive requirements documentation, reducing the risk of misinterpretation and gaps.
  3. Enhanced Traceability and Impact Analysis: AI can improve traceability by automatically linking requirements to their corresponding design elements, test cases, and implementation tasks. In the event of a change in requirements, AI can quickly assess the impact on the project, providing valuable insights for decision-making.
  4. Predictive Analytics and Risk Management: AI can analyze historical project data to identify patterns and predict potential risks and challenges. By leveraging predictive analytics, organizations can proactively address issues before they escalate, ensuring smoother project execution.
  5. Real-time Collaboration and Feedback: AI-powered collaboration tools facilitate real-time communication and feedback among stakeholders, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. These tools can also provide intelligent suggestions and recommendations, enhancing the quality of discussions and decisions.
  6. Continuous Learning and Improvement: AI systems can continuously learn from past projects and refine their algorithms, leading to ongoing improvements in requirements management processes. This continuous learning capability ensures that organizations stay ahead of the curve and adapt to evolving project needs.

Case Study: AI in Action

Consider a software development company implementing AI in their requirements management process. By using an AI-driven tool, the company automated the elicitation of requirements from client emails and documents. The tool identified and categorized requirements, linking them to specific project tasks and design elements. This automation reduced the time spent on manual documentation by 50%, allowing the team to focus on higher-value activities.

Moreover, the AI tool provided real-time impact analysis when changes were requested by the client. It quickly identified affected areas, allowing the team to make informed decisions and adjust project plans accordingly. The result was a more agile and responsive project management process, leading to increased client satisfaction and successful project delivery.

Conclusion

The integration of Artificial Intelligence in requirements management represents a significant advancement in how organizations handle complex projects. By automating routine tasks, enhancing traceability, and providing predictive insights, AI empowers teams to deliver high-quality projects on time and within budget. As AI technology continues to evolve, its impact on requirements management will only grow, offering even more innovative solutions to meet the challenges of tomorrow’s projects.

Organizations that embrace AI in their requirements management processes will not only improve their project outcomes but also gain a competitive edge in an increasingly dynamic and demanding business environment.

Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by McKenzie Jonsson and Mario Maldari.

RELATED: Best Practices for Writing Requirements Webinar

Unleash the Full Potential of Your Requirements with Jama Connect Advisor™

Successful product delivery starts with precise, well-written requirements that align design, software, and hardware teams with clear project goals. Jama Connect Advisor™ is a cutting-edge tool powered by natural language processing, guiding system engineers and product developers to create effective requirement specifications based on INCOSE and EARS standards.

Teams are using Jama Connect Advisor to:

  • Improve the quality and usability of requirements
  • Save time authoring, reviewing, and updating requirement statements
  • Continuously enhance team requirement authoring skills with regular use
  • Deliver programs and projects on time and on budget with long-term success

LEARN MORE:
Improve the quality of your requirements, save time, and enhance team skills with Jama Connect Advisor™.

Simplify Audit Documentation by Leveraging the Power of an Itemized Database

In this blog, we recap a section of our recent eBook, “Simplify Audit Documentation by Leveraging the Power of an Itemized Database” – Click HERE to read the whole thing.

Simplify Audit Documentation by Leveraging the Power of an Itemized Database

How to enhance efficiency, auditability, and stay ahead of the competition with Jama Connect® for Medical Device Development

In the current landscape of medical device and life sciences development — in addition to facing relentless pressures to innovate, remain competitive, and release quality products — medical device developers also must comply with rigorous regulations and standards for their products to be marketed, distributed, and sold in regulated markets like the United States and the European Union.

However, reliance on traditional documents or legacy document-driven systems like Cognition Cockpit and Polarion poses challenges for professionals, particularly those in roles such as quality assurance. This eBook delves into the transition from document-centric workflows to itemized databases, focusing on Jama Connect® as a solution to enhance efficiency and auditability in product development processes.

RELATED: Jama Connect® for Medical Device & Life Sciences Development Datasheet

The Challenge of Document-Centric Workflows

Traditional product development processes for medical device companies revolve around document-centric workflows. This section highlights the inherent limitations and complexities
associated with managing requirements, traceability, and change control solely through documents.

Challenges include:

  • Manual traceability matrices often lead to a time-consuming and error-prone process, making it challenging to maintain accurate and up-to-date links between requirements, design elements, and test cases, which are critical for regulatory compliance and product quality.
  • Version control issues can result in confusion, inconsistencies, and potential compliance risks, as stakeholders struggle to identify the most current documentation amidst multiple iterations, revisions, and parallel development efforts.
  • Difficulties working in an Agile workflow can hinder traceability and documentation, as the rapid pace of iterations and evolving requirements make it challenging to maintain clear and auditable links between user stories, tasks, and regulatory documentation, impacting the ability to demonstrate compliance and validation.

  • The absence of a single source of truth contributes to inefficiencies, as disparate document repositories result in data silos, inconsistent information, and difficulty in
    reconciling different versions of documentation, leading to confusion and potential errors in audits or reviews.
  • Slow quality management processes can delay the verification and validation of documentation, impacting the timely detection and resolution of compliance issues, and the ability to demonstrate adherence to regulatory standards, potentially delaying product approvals and market entry.
  • The risk of errors escalating during iterative design phases grows as manual documentation processes and fragmented tools make it difficult to track and manage changes, increasing the likelihood of overlooked requirements, design inconsistencies, and compliance gaps that can surface during regulatory assessments and audits.

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

The Value Proposition of an Itemized Database

Central to this transition is understanding the inherent value of itemized databases like Jama Connect. This section explores the tangible benefits, including real-time traceability, proactive change management, and improved product quality.

By embracing itemized databases, organizations can:

  • Accelerate Product Development Cycles: By accelerating product development cycles, organizations can increase their market competitiveness and improve their ability to meet customer demands, while minimizing the risk of delays or missed opportunities caused by manual documentation processes.
  • Maintain Proactive Traceability: By maintaining proactive traceability, organizations can demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements, ensuring transparency and accountability throughout the development process, while enabling faster detection and resolution of issues before they escalate.
  • Gain Visibility into Progress and Coverage: By gaining visibility into progress and coverage, organizations can identify gaps and redundancies in their documentation, prioritize requirements, and allocate resources effectively, improving overall product quality, and reducing the risk of compliance issues.
  • Proactively Manage Risks: By proactively managing risks, organizations can reduce the likelihood of errors and minimize the potential impact of issues, ensuring patient safety and reducing the risk of product recalls, legal liability, or damage to reputation.
  • Link Suspect Items and Manage Change: By linking suspect items and effectively managing change, organizations can streamline the change management process, minimizing the impact of revisions on other items, and ensuring that each change is properly reviewed and validated before implementation.
  • Maintain an Agile Workflow: By easily maintaining an Agile workflow, organizations can support their development teams, empowering them to collaborate and innovate effectively, while ensuring that their processes remain compliant and traceable throughout the development lifecycle.
  • Enhance Documentation: By enhancing compliance documentation, organizations can improve their ability to adhere to regulatory requirements and expectations, minimize the risk of non-compliance, and demonstrate their commitment to patient safety and quality outcomes.
  • Reuse Requirements: By reusing requirements and enabling release management, organizations can optimize their resources, reduce duplicative efforts, and improve their ability to deliver products that meet customer needs and expectations.
  • Automate Version Control: By automating version control, organizations can minimize the risk of errors caused by manual processes, streamline the review and approval of documentation, and improve their ability to manage multiple iterations and revisions while maintaining an accurate audit trail.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS EBOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY:
Simplify Audit Documentation by Leveraging the Power of an Itemized Database

SysML is Not Enough: Why You Still Need a Requirements Management Tool

SysML is Not Enough: Why You Still Need a Requirements Management Tool

All engineering process models (Agile, waterfall, spiral development, V-model, concurrent engineering, iterative…) describe managing requirements as the most critical key to success. Well-understood requirements provide a single connection point for communication across the engineering teams. Using a Systems Modeling Language (SysML) tool alone to manage requirements instantly creates a silo between engineering teams.

Requirements, tests, architectures, and risks are utilized by every stakeholder when developing a new product or building or modernizing a new system. Customers generate needs and requirements and care what the development status of those are and whether the development team is following the necessary process especially if it requires contract adherence or must meet regulatory laws or industry standards.

Software, hardware, and testing teams also access requirements to be able to analyze, develop, and test. Additionally, they are creating requirements at their given subsystem level too.

Systems Engineers work across all levels of requirements and coordinate the other engineering disciplines. NASA best describes it as, “Systems engineering is a holistic, integrative discipline, wherein the contributions of structural engineers, electrical engineers, mechanism designers, power engineers, human factors engineers, and many more disciplines are evaluated and balanced, one against another, to produce a coherent whole that is not dominated by the perspective of a single discipline.” – NASA

As you can imagine functionality such as configuration management of requirements, traceability between needs, requirements, tests, risks, and architecture are necessary. Systems engineers have been using various tools and even manual techniques for decades to do this.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

The Advertised Purpose of SysML

SysML is a graphical modeling language that is used within some systems modeling tools (such as Dassault’s Catia Nomagic) that enables systems engineers to perform “engineering” of the system. SysML “supports the specification, analysis, design, verification, and validation of a broad range of systems and systems-of-systems.” – Wikipedia

SysML is only a decade old; already a new, more complex version has recently been released; and SysML is yet to be widely adopted. It is widely thought to hold promise for the discipline of model-based systems engineering (MBSE). It is not the only language in use for MBSE though; LML and OPM are examples of modeling languages too, being used within other systems modeling tools.

However, a SysML model is difficult even for those trained in the language. Some indicate the learning curve is steep and the mechanics in the tools are difficult as cited in a recent article by Technology Strategy Partners. Additionally, the variety of tools that support SysML don’t consider themselves as a replacement for a true requirements management tool either. Capabilities from a dedicated requirements management tool such as Jama Connect have built-in collaboration, configuration management, baselines, managing traceability across multiple levels of objects, managing the verification and validation activities, controlling access and change to objects using role-based permissions, and showing real-time workflow states at the object level.

“What SysML lacks is its usage during key Systems Engineering (SE) phases like detail design or implementation phases wherein specific solutions like CAD, Software coding or network design for embedded systems are used,” said Kiran Jacob, Dassault Systems.

Also challenging is usage by software teams during later-stage design phases. Communication of the model (its requirements) becomes critical when needing to validate requirements with the customer, with product managers, and with other engineering disciplines outside of the SysML Scribe (tool jockey). The greater responsibility of the systems engineer as a cross-disciplined communicator requires the use of tools outside of the SysML tool to communicate. Effective communication of requirements is best represented in dedicated requirements management tools.

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

Conclusion

In conclusion, while SysML and other modeling languages offer significant promise for the discipline of model-based systems engineering, they are not without their challenges. The complexity of SysML, along with its steep learning curve and the limitations of the tools supporting it, often hinders its effectiveness in later stages of design and implementation. As such, relying solely on SysML can create silos within engineering teams, impeding the critical communication and coordination necessary for successful systems engineering.

Effective requirements management remains the cornerstone of any engineering process, ensuring all stakeholders — from customers to software and hardware teams — are aligned and informed. Dedicated requirements management tools, such as Jama Connect, offer robust features like collaboration, configuration management, and traceability, which are essential for managing the multifaceted aspects of modern engineering projects. These tools facilitate clear communication of requirements, verification, and validation activities across all engineering disciplines, thereby supporting the holistic, integrative approach championed by systems engineering.

Ultimately, the synergy between specialized requirements management tools and SysML can provide a comprehensive solution, leveraging the strengths of both to enhance the efficiency and success of engineering projects. As the field continues to evolve, adopting a balanced approach that incorporates the best practices and tools from both domains will be key to navigating the complexities of modern systems engineering.

Manage by Exception: Data-Driven Practices to Improve Product, Systems, and Software Quality

In this blog, we recap our eB00k, “Manage by Exception: Data-Driven Practices to Improve Product, Systems, and Software Quality” – Download the complete paper HERE.

Manage by Exception: Data-Driven Practices to Improve Product, Systems, and Software Quality

Requirement errors in product development cost time and money and create potential liabilities. The expense of these errors can make up between 70% and 85% of all rework costs. When leaders don’t have data related to the execution process, teams aren’t tracing requirements back to the “‘why’,” and when there’s a lack of insight into aspects like verification coverage, you’re much more likely to encounter programs late in the development cycle, resulting in expensive problems.

This creates the all-too-familiar scenario seen in the news of product, systems, or software defects and the resulting fallout. Organizations can avoid many of these challenges by accessing the right data at the right moment — and ideally early — in the development process. As most executives and managers know, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Using data to measure allows your teams to spot recurring patterns and abnormalities early, before they grow into larger challenges later in the development cycle.

Requirement errors in complex product, systems, and software development can consume between 70% and 85% of all project rework costs.

Why “Data-Based Management” is Critical, and How it Uncovers Gaps

Management by exception is a method that empowers your team with data focused on early warning indicators. It’s these warnings that help support faster and more informed decisions.

As a result, leaders can focus on exceptions rather than needlessly micromanaging and intervening with teams when the data shows that development is going as expected.

In other words, when using data, the goal isn’t to micromanage, but to do the opposite: leverage the data to do less micromanagement.

The result is fewer manual requests, fewer status updates, fewer test procedure specification reports, and fewer unnecessary meetings.

Data-driven practices help you automatically evaluate exceptions without needlessly relying on a person to manually hunt them down, evaluate them, and communicate about them. Instead, abnormalities and oversights are brought forward to reduce managerial workloads by minimizing unnecessary intervention and allowing more time to be spent in areas that have the greatest impact.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Examples of Exceptions in Daily Product, System, and Software Development and Requirements Management

As you adopt a data-driven approach, there are several considerations, but the first is identifying the expected or acceptable process for your research and development function.

Many organizations don’t have a defined practice; instead, operations are based on how things have always been done. Defining processes gives you greater focus.

Once you have an expected process, you can leverage the data to manage by exception but also take things a step further by managing requirements quality, traceability, and completeness. These capabilities will help predict and prevent poor outcomes in product, system, and software delivery.

A tool such as Jama Connect® can help you successfully manage exceptions, such as in these four examples.

1. Version and Change Management – The Jama Connect dashboard shows requirements missing verification. For example, it might flag two requirements missing verifications, and if you click for more details, you can view a filtered list of those requirements. And you can ask Jama Connect to show those missing a downstream verification. The filters are a powerful way to understand and create audits for capturing those exceptions in your process.

2. Derived Requirements Missing Rationale – Using a filter, Jama Connect allows you to see if a particular requirement has a missing rationale. For example, a hardware or software engineer may create a new requirement. But when that’s done,
it’s crucial to have a solid rationale for why, especially if the requirement is not directly related to a stakeholder’s need or contractual requirement. You don’t want to introduce unnecessary capabilities that aren’t going to align with the actual user needs or have a real rationale behind them.

3. Remediate Rejected Requirements – Jama Connect has a capability called Review Center. It allows you to send requirements into a review with colleagues, which can increase the quality of the requirements and create a shared understanding. Leaders can quickly spot the rejected requirements and discuss how to move forward. With many organizations working remotely, this capability helps increase asynchronous collaboration so that working sessions and meetings can more efficiently focus on exceptions.

4. Find Poorly Written Requirements – The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) created a handbook of recommended rules to author well written requirements. For example, requirements using vague terms that are not testable could be flagged for improvement.

With Jama Connect Advisor™, powered by natural language processing, INCOSE’s best practices, and the Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax (EARS), teams can now check the quality and accuracy of their requirements.

RELATED: Requirements Traceability Diagnostic

Critical Metrics to Consider

Having data, a way to view it in context, and metrics to track it empowers your leaders to make the right decision at the right time and predict how well the project or product development will trend. Metrics are an essential part of that equation, and here are two to consider tracking.

1. Requirement Quality – Most product, system, or software failures are due to undocumented, poorly written, or misunderstood requirements. And the later in the product lifecycle the problem is discovered, the higher the cost. Measure your requirement quality, and if you need support, your Jama Software team of in-house experts can help with audit assessments, training, and other resources to help improve the quality of your requirements.

2. Traceability Score™ – Traceability is a core tenet of building complex products, but it hasn’t been measured in a standard way in the past. But if you can measure it, you can improve it.

For example, Jama Software has aggregated and anonymized over 40,000 projects and over 6,000 traceability models using Jama Connect. And we’ve defined an actual approach to measure a Traceability Score™.

Our Traceability Benchmark study shows this traceability score produces a clear correlation between quality and time to market.

It starts with setting up the expected behavior of your engineering team – the traceability model. We take the number of established relationships among the different model elements in the traceability model and divide that by the number of expected relationships defined by the project’s relationship and traceability model. This gives us the traceability score.

For example, a requirement should have three different elements:

Imagine an example where you have two of those established, but one is missing. The Traceability Score is 66%, and with that metric, you can take the appropriate action. Our above-mentioned benchmarking research showed that higher Traceability Scores™ equaled improved product quality and faster time to market.

Integration of your digital engineering tool suite is critically important. In product development, many tools such as Excel, development applications, modeling applications, testing applications, and others are used. These tools capture critical data about your product and system development lifecycle.

But if they aren’t integrated, you can’t measure critical information like your Traceability Score. As a result, managing by exception isn’t possible due to a lack of data, which risks product delays, extra costs, and even compliance and audit failures. Ensure that critical tools are integrated to support real-time data visibility.

TO LEARN MORE, DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE WHITEPAPER HERE:
“Manage by Exception: Data-Driven Practices to Improve Product, Systems, and Software Quality”

Streamlining SOC2 Type 2 Compliance: How Jama Connect® Can Help Enable Audit Success

Streamlining SOC2 Type 2 Compliance: How Jama Connect® Can Help Enable Audit Success

In today’s business landscape, technology and data play a crucial role. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to prioritize the security and privacy of sensitive information. One way to do this is by undergoing a SOC2 Type 2 audit.

A SOC2 audit provides an independent, third-party validation that a service organization’s information security practices meet industry standards stipulated by the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.) During the audit process, a service organization’s non-financial reporting controls as they relate to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of a system are tested.

This audit provides customers and partners with trust and assurance regarding an organization’s data security practices. It also helps businesses in regulated industries meet compliance requirements, manage risks by identifying and mitigating security threats, and gain a competitive edge by demonstrating a strong commitment to security. Furthermore, it can drive internal improvements by enhancing policies and procedures related to data protection.

Jama Software® is the only vendor in the requirements management and traceability space that is SOC2 Type 2 compliant both on the application layer and the data center offerings. In this blog post, we’ve invited Jama Software team members Sarah Voget – Team Lead, Project Manager, Jennifer Esposti – Project Manager, and Cooper Graham – Compliance Analyst, to detail their experiences preparing for and passing the SOC2 Type 2 audit and how they will use Jama Connect® to improve future audits.

Preparing for the audit process

Tell us about your experience with SOC2 audits in the past. What tools have you used at other companies? What were some of the challenges or drawbacks to those solutions?

Sarah Voget: The biggest challenge I ran into at previous companies was that no one tool could easily compile and track evidence for recurring audits. Passing an audit requires a company to compile substantial evidence from a variety of sources in a variety of formats. For example, we upload free text answers from subject matter experts (SMEs) to specific audit questions along with supporting screenshots, policy documents, PDF reports, etc. While tools like OneDrive or Excel could keep such information somewhat organized, it was incredibly difficult to have a holistic picture of audit evidence over time. Each year during audit prep, I felt like I had to reinvent the wheel by tracking down audit evidence from a variety of systems and SMEs all over again.

Tell us how you came up with the idea of using Jama Connect® for SOC2 compliance.

Voget: When I first joined Jama Software, I attended an internal presentation about Jama Connect, where I learned about our product’s strength in end-to-end requirements tracking. A lightbulb went off in my head because that’s really what audit prep is all about. An audit is like a list of requirements that we must prove we’re meeting, and each year, we reevaluate our effectiveness at meeting those requirements. It’s critical for us to understand how we met certain requirements in the past and to continuously iterate on our security policies and procedures as they relate to those requirements. Once I made that connection, I realized the potential power of Jama Connect as an internal audit preparation and readiness tool.

Can you provide any information about how you formatted Jama Connect initially to prepare for the audit?

Voget: My first attempt at using Jama Connect for audit prep focused on the big problem I mentioned earlier: compiling huge amounts of evidence in one place where I could easily access it over time.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Lessons for future audits

Taking lessons from the first SOC2 audit using Jama Connect – what did you think could be improved on? What were the wins?

Jennifer Esposti: For the initial audit, Jama Connect was used primarily as a content management tool, which allowed us to organize and document the required evidence. This year, we wanted to expand our use to include the monthly, quarterly, and annual maintenance we do as a cross-functional team to ensure we are maintaining the necessary processes for SOC2 compliance.

Cooper Graham: In the first year run-through, we stored some critical information, such as the trust criteria and some information around the auditor questions and requests and our responses in Jama Connect, which limited those resources to those involved in the audit. The primary win was seeing the potential of the Jama Connect application for managing and tracking our SOC2 preparation. Having a foundation in the application that we could build on year-to-year rather than starting from scratch for each year’s preparation. Using additional features and elements in the Jama Connect application for collaboration and organization of our preparation.

What changes have you made from the initial SOC2 audit?

Esposti: From a project management perspective, I use the test management functionality within Jama Connect to organize the monthly, quarterly, and annual check-ins. The test cases provide a clear and consistent process for the project team to follow.

Graham: Using the test management functionality, we were able to organize and track recurring check-ins to ensure we were prepared for the upcoming audit. We were able to document more specific questions and responses that were provided during the previous audit to have a better understanding of the auditor’s asks and wants. It also gives our subject matter and individuals involved in the audit the ability to see what was previously asked to prepare for the upcoming audit.

How is Jama Connect well suited to help teams prove SOC2 compliance?

Graham: As a requirements management product, the ability to identify the requirements, track the associated testing, and include evidence or links to key artifact locations really assists in the organization for the audit and ensures nothing slips through the cracks.

How are you leveraging features in Jama Connect for this year’s audit and beyond?

Esposti: My focus this year is on using the test management functionality to organize our evidence and ensure we are performing the required tasks on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. For future audits, I’d like to explore ways we can use Jama Connect to track our progress year-over-year.

Graham: We are utilizing Jama Connect’s Test Management functionality in a new way this year. The ability to organize monthly, quarterly, and annual check-ins and create test plans associated with specific teams ensures that all of the pre-audit due diligence is performed. The ability to create test cases that can be reused ensures consistency for every check-in. Having everything laid out in Jama Connect allows us to identify gaps and potential improvements to test cases and collaborate more effectively with key stakeholders. In the future, we plan to use Live Traceability™ to have a better view of the SOC2 process, from requirements to testing to end results. As the Jama Connect application goes through its releases, new features and functionality are being continuously added. We’re constantly looking to see if there are new elements that would aid us in preparation for future SOC2 audits.

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

CONCLUSION

Meeting SOC 2 Type 2 requirements requires careful attention to detail and strong management of organizational processes. A comprehensive solution like Jama Connect can greatly assist teams in navigating this complex terrain. By centralizing and automating requirement management, Jama Connect ensures traceability, transparency, and accountability throughout the development process. Its collaborative features facilitate efficient communication and documentation, which are crucial for meeting SOC 2 Type 2 standards.

Using Jama Connect, engineering organizations can now intelligently manage the development process by leveraging Live Traceability™ across best-of-breed tools to measurably improve outcomes.

Live Traceability enables organizations to meet SOC2 Type 2 standards by effectively tracking data and processes within their systems. By utilizing Live Traceability, companies can demonstrate their compliance with SOC2 Type 2 standards through well-documented information and audit trails. This promotes transparency and accountability. Staying updated with the latest SOC2 Type 2 standards is crucial for maintaining secure operations and reducing risks. Jama Connect remains current by regularly updating its platform to adhere to the latest SOC2 Type 2 standards, ensuring companies remain compliant and secure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Seven Steps to Performing FMEA

The Seven Steps to Performing FMEA

Welcome to this deep dive into the world of FMEA

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a powerful tool used in various industries to identify and mitigate potential failures in a process, product, or system. In this blog, we will take a detailed look at the seven steps involved in performing an FMEA.

RELATED: Jama Connect® FMEA Framework for Automotive

1: Define the scope and team.

  • Clearly define the boundaries of the process, product, or system you are analyzing, assemble a multidisciplinary team consisting of experts from different areas to ensure a comprehensive analysis.

2: Break down the process.

  • Divide the process into manageable steps or components. This helps to identify potential failure modes at each stage.

3: Identify potential failure modes.

  • Brainstorm all potential failure modes for each process step. These are the ways in which the process or component could fail to perform its intended function.

4: Assess the severity.

  • Assign a severity rating to each failure mode based on its potential impact on the customer, product, or process. This helps prioritize which failure modes require immediate attention.

5: Determine the causes.

  • Identify the root causes or factors contributing to each failure mode. This requires conducting thorough analysis and gathering relevant data.

6: Evaluate the current detection controls.

  • Assess the effectiveness of the current controls in place to detect or prevent failure modes from occurring. Identify any gaps or weaknesses that need to be addressed.

7: Calculate the risk priority number RPM.

  • The RPM is a numerical score obtained by multiplying severity, occurrence, and detection ratings. This allows you to prioritize which failure modes require immediate action

RELATED: FMEA Framework for Medical Device Development

By following these seven steps, you can perform a comprehensive FMEA and proactively identify and mitigate potential failures or risks in your process, product, or system. Remember, FMEA is an iterative process that requires continuous improvement. Regularly review and update your analysis as new information becomes available and track the effectiveness of your implemented actions. Thank you for diving deep into the seven steps of performing FMEA. Now you have a better understanding of how to apply this critical process in your industry.

Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Karrie Sundbom, McKenzie Jonsson, and Decoteau Wilkerson.