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Recently, we explored the results of a Forrester Research report that concluded that highly regulated industries can benefit from an Agile approach to requirements management. In today’s post, we’ll dig deeper into how customers in all industries can benefit from a collaborative platform that helps them manage requirements throughout complex development cycles.

According to a recent report from Engineering.com, in spite of growing product complexity and intense regulations, the majority of design teams don’t have a dedicated requirements management (RM) solution in place. About half use a tool that’s not purpose-built for requirements management, while almost a third have no system in place at all, relying instead on email and shared documents.

Only 15% of teams surveyed by Engineering.com had invested in a dedicated RM solution — but that number should be (and will be) much higher, as more organizations come to understand the long-term value of successful requirements management.

Here are three reasons why your organization needs a RM solution.

Poor requirements management leads to product failures.

Engineering.com reports that more than four out of five design teams have experienced product failure due to substandard requirements management. Failures included exceeding cost requirements and losing time to market, but most teams experienced more than one failed outcome, like a product that was late to market and cost more than expected to build.

The report also showed that organizations using dedicated requirements management platforms in regulated industries not only received fewer instances of warnings, recalls, fines and production stoppages than those that didn’t, but nearly half reported experiencing none of those problems at all.

Teams without the right requirements management tool will ship products that haven’t met requirements.

As product complexity increases, teams without comprehensive RM solutions report shipping products that don’t meet all requirements. There are several reasons why teams report that their products were shipped with missing requirements, many of which can be linked to increased product complexity, including more frequent use of microprocessors, the need to adopt different materials, and demand for embedded software.

Shipping a product that doesn’t meet requirements can lead to reprimands from regulatory agencies or even product recalls, which can permanently damage your brand reputation and position in the market.

Products and systems are only getting more complex, driving the need for the right requirements solution.

More complexity means more time spent tracking requirements. To quote from the Engineering.com report, “Many of the respondents who increased the complexity of their products acknowledged spending excessive time tracking requirements due to poor requirements management. Those needing to connect products (IoT) and add more microprocessors suffered the most, quickly followed by those needing to embed software and reduce product size.”

Image courtesy of Engineering.com

Products are getting smarter, and development teams need intuitive, powerful RM solutions to manage that rising complexity. As the Engineering.com report concludes: “It is clear from the data that the products most design teams are creating are becoming more complex. Yet, they have not thought of investing in the tools available that would help them manage the requirements this complexity demands.”

To dive deeper into the relationship between rising product complexity and effective requirements management, download the full report: “Design Teams: Requirements Management & Product Complexity.”

A recent study of almost 300 design and engineering professionals conducted by Engineering.com and sponsored by Jama Software showed that not only are products increasing in complexity, but that many organizations are not equipped with the right tools to manage the intricacies of complex product development.

The study showed that over the last five years, unsurprisingly, most development teams have seen their products become more complex. In fact, 92% of respondents in the study reported experiencing at least one form of increasing complexity.

In fact, over the last five years, 76% of respondents reported dealing with three or more increased measures of complexity and 25% saw their products become more complex in five or more ways.

Here are the top three ways that products have become more complicated in the last five years, according to the study:

Mechanical Designs are Getting More Intricate

Part of what makes modern product development so complex is the volume of parts and components involved. The survey found that mechanical designs had become more intricate in the last five years for more than half (57%) of respondents. Not only are the number of components increasing, parts are sourced from multiple vendors and are now much smaller and more technologically advanced, adding another layer of complexity to product development.

And with mechanical design intricacy comes increasingly complex requirements. The study showed that product feature requirements are critical to 79% of respondents and that in order to properly manage intricate mechanical designs, organizations need an information system to handle requirements throughout each stage of product development. Further, teams using a formal, purpose-built requirements management platform were less likely to experience product outcome failures.

Download the Full Report Now

Electronic Components are Increasing

According to the study, about half of respondents (47%) said that products were becoming more complex because of the increasing number of electronic components. As the market continues to demand more connected products — think thermostats, lights and doorbells that all connect to your smartphone — product developers must incorporate more electronic components and software into their designs.

And while this won’t come as a shock to anyone, it’s clear that integrating more electronic components, embedded software and microprocessors necessitates clear and granular requirements management and testing.

Teams Are Needing to Adopt Different Materials

Nearly half (43%) of respondents said that products are increasing in complexity because they are adopting new materials. And while this is true across all industries represented in the study, it’s especially true for the automotive industry.

Connected automobiles are rising in popularity and giving drivers new ways of interacting with vehicles while providing data directly to smartphones. Under the hood, many electric and connected vehicles work with entirely different designs and materials than traditional combustion engines, leading to faster performance and less maintenance.

And, of course, the race towards self-driving automobiles is bringing with it a whole new level of intense complexity that’s forcing teams to adopt new and innovative technologies and materials.

Managing Requirements in Complex Product Development

Perhaps the most interesting finding to come out of this report is that while 92% of respondents reported experiencing at least one form of increasing complexity, only 15% relied on a dedicated requirements management platform to help them manage that complexity. Further, without a purpose-built solution, the report showed that teams with ineffective requirements management were more likely to experience product outcome failures (83%) and reprimands by regulatory agencies (62%).

The report went on to conclude that the data showed that most design and engineering teams are producing increasingly complex products. Yet most teams haven’t been investing in the technology available that would help them manage the requirements this complexity demands.

To dive deeper into the relationship between rising product complexity and effective requirements management, download the full report: “Design Teams: Requirements Management & Product Complexity.”

What do you call a system that has never-changing requirements? An obsolete system. Systems that are healthy and growing are always evolving or changing in some way.

Avionics, automotive and medical systems require airtight requirements. For the customers and users of these complex systems—and the companies building them—safety and security is critical.

Getting safety-critical requirements right is a surefire step in the right direction.

But too often, the requirements for these systems’ components invite more questions than they answer, and requirements management turns into a process of trying to pick out the bits of data you need, when you need them, while everything churns together in a roiling, boiling stew.

Safety-critical systems developers working with regulations and compliance standards know that opting for speed over safety, or safety over speed, adds risk. To succeed, both must be prioritized.

The majority of product, version and variant failures stem from weak requirements.

According to Vance Hilderman, CEO of the safety-critical systems and software engineering company AFuzion, “Safety-critical requirements include safety aspects, but not exclusively. There’s a grey area between functional, performance and safety requirements because if the system doesn’t function, it can’t be safe. If it doesn’t meet performance criteria it might not achieve safety aspects, but then there are explicit safety requirements as well. The problem is that most safety-critical requirement specifications are incomplete. They lack complete hazard-prevention mitigation. They can all be improved.”

“Almost all accidents related to software components in the past 20 years can be traced to flaws in the requirement specifications such as unhandled cases.” – Software Engineering, Safety-Critical Requirements & Specification

The challenge is to prevent those accidents in the first place and try to make tomorrow’s unhandled case be a handled case today. Knowing the right procedures for developing safety-critical requirements is the key. But what are these best practices, why are they the “best,” and how do teams utilize them? Vance offers some tips, below:

Good requirements should be mandatory. That means not a goal, not if you have time but truly mandatory.
Requirements must be consistent. Meaning, they don’t conflict with other requirements. Systems engineers must be able to manage and analyze requirements; with complex systems you need tools for that.
Requirements must be uniquely identified. They must state what we do, not how. The “how” is design and architecture.
Requirements need to be complete and unambiguous. That means full concurrence among developers as to what a requirement means, with no need for interpretation, because the requirement has sufficient detail to know exactly what the developer of that requirement intended.
Requirements must be consistent, with no conflicting characteristics. We know the priority, the timing aspects and we know the performance attributes. We cannot have conflicting logic. A or B, or A and B when C is not valid. We avoid different terms. For example, “trigger, assign, prompt, display, cue.” Those five words could be interchangeable but they’re different. We must be consistent.
Requirements must be traceable. That’s an essential part of good requirements management activities—to trace up to a system-level requirement and trace down to the implementation and the test. Traceability is also used during the code review to assess, “Does this logic fully implement all it should”?
Requirements must be testable. Each requirement is defined in quantifiable terms. For each requirement, can a test be formulated that will unambiguously answer the question, “Has the requirement been met?” Some things are that simple.
Requirements must be verifiable. For example, take this requirement, “The system shall support autonomous driving or flying.” All of us in the automotive world, we’re leaning towards that, from aviation to new AVs.

To learn more about how to build, maintain and reuse a rock-solid requirements foundation, please watch Developing Safety-Critical System & Software Requirements.

As the leader of Jama’s Customer Care department, I work with the team to cultivate relationships with our customers. Each relationship is highly dependent on the customer’s specific needs in a given situation. When our customers file tickets, we need to be the Problem Solver. When they comment on the Community, we need to be the Moderator. Sometimes we are the Trainer, the Messenger and the Writer. In all of these roles we consider ourselves a partner in our customers’ success. However, we’ve always felt there was something missing. In brainstorming with the team, we uncovered a desire to be an Advocate. Advocacy is not something formally included in any of the roles we assume currently. As such, we’ve identified the need for a new, premium support offering which provides strategic technical planning and additional technical guidance from a dedicated Customer Care team member, and today we are excited to announce the new Technical Account Manager (TAM) role.

Designed to serve enterprises relying on Jama for mission critical product delivery, TAMs provide high-touch technical guidance, technical planning, education, and business management.

As a dedicated partner, TAMs will expedite time-to-value for customers providing the following:

Technical Guidance: Your TAM will deeply understand your current Jama environment, overseeing all of your support tickets and acting as the escalation lead should anything critical arise. The TAM will ensure that the right resources are assigned to your work.

Technical Planning: Your TAM will help you scope and plan for the technical future of Jama in your organization. Through this program you will have access to the latest advancements in our deployment model.

Education: Each year we will conduct an education assessment for your users and design a program to close the gaps with the major themes.

Business Management: Your TAM will partner with your Customer Success Manager to delivery quarterly business reviews that encompass your business strategy and technical landscape.

In addition to having a named TAM, there are a number of other features included in the Premium Support Offering, you can check them all out here. If you have any questions about this offering, let your Jama Customer Success Manager know.

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