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Live Requirements Traceability

Achieving Live Traceability™ of product requirements, as necessitated by industry standards, across siloed engineering teams and tools, is the #1 unsolved problem for most product development organizations. One of the main barriers is that each engineering discipline (systems, software, hardware, electrical, risk, verification and validation) has optimized its own process and tools. When looking at the end-to-end product development process siloed teams, tools, and data make it very challenging to trace development activity from initial requirement definition through development and testing.

As a result, requirements traceability becomes a time-consuming, error-prone, frustrating, and manual, after-the-fact process. The inability for the product development organization to continually trace ongoing development efforts and changes back to user and system requirements results in missed requirements, defects, rework, delays, audit letters, and cost overruns.

How to achieve Live Traceability™ without forcing change on engineering teams

So how does an organization achieve Live Traceability across a best-of-breed tool environment supporting disparate methodologies, terminologies, fields, and statuses? The answer is a 3-step approach:

Step One | Live Traceability Model

Define a Live Traceability model across the end-to-end product development process with relationship rules for the traceable data elements across best-of-breed tools. An automotive functional safety example is shown below. Here you can see the operational instantiation of functional safety standards requirements in a relationship model within Jama Connect®. All necessary traceable information is included with continuous syncs to best-of-breed tools within engineering teams to deliver Live Traceability.

Step Two | Adaptive Data Field Mapping

To achieve Live Traceability, integrations with best-of-breed tools (such as those shown in the example) are required. The typical integration approach standardizes field names and statuses to ensure consistency across the connected tool, but this does not achieve the dual objective of Live Traceability with no changes required in how each engineering team works. Alternately, the proven approach is to apply adaptive data field mapping to ensure no change to engineering teams’ fields and statuses which simultaneously ensures a consistent, process wide, Live Traceability model. This is achieved through robust mapping and normalization logic functionality to easily address the various approaches taken by each engineering team.

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This is Part 2 of a series examining the role legacy requirements management solutions, such as IBM® DOORS®, play in introducing project risk to the product development process. To read Part 1, visit Why Migrate, Why Now?: Part 1

5 Common Migration Myths Debunked

Transitioning to a new solution doesn’t have to be challenging; however, there are some assumptions that mislead us into thinking that difficulty is inevitable. Consider the following myths:

MYTH 1: Migrating away from IBM solutions will be more expensive. The amount of work that goes into upgrading to IBM DOORS Next or transitioning to a new RM solution is the same, differentiated only by the quality of the tool and services available to help with migration. An option other than the DOORS family is most often a better fit for your organization.

MYTH 2: Customization will carry over to DOORS Next. You spent a lot of time customizing IBM DOORS and may believe those customizations will transition seamlessly to DOORS Next. However, this isn’t the case and is the reason selecting a different solution doesn’t involve more work.

MYTH 3: DOORS is already deployed and cheap to maintain. Continuing the current path with IBM DOORS is an expensive option in the long term, and often requires dedicated personnel. Switching to an alternative RM solution can improve efficiency while saving money.

MYTH 4: Business disruption is too difficult. The right RM tool will empower teams to effectively hit deadlines, collaborate, and improve business outcomes.

MYTH 5: The user experience will suffer. Many people refuse to use DOORS due to a challenging user experience. DOORS Next is a completely new tool with a new user experience. Adopting a user-friendly solution allows teams to collaborate far more effectively as team members can accelerate concepts, designs, and validations for faster times to market.

The fact is, IBM® DOORS® is extremely outdated, and at some point, updates and support will inevitably end.

If you’re currently using DOORS, you likely know that moving to a different solution is necessary, and you might be considering DOORS Next. However, fast-shifting market dynamics require a new approach to accelerate innovation. As a modern alternative to traditional legacy platforms, Jama Connect® enables digital transformation with a more efficient and user-friendly approach to managing risk and compliance.

Customers agree, naming Jama Connect the overall leader (#1) in requirements management software on G2, outranking IBM DOORS Next for implementation time, adoption, ROI, and market presence.

Jama Connect is a proven IBM DOORS alternative with flexible and reliable solutions, including:

Operation in an IBM DOORS supply chain.“Innovative companies leverage Jama Connect to get up and running fast with a modern requirements management process that tightly aligns with industry standards and practices that support regulatory compliance. Organizations can connect to customers and suppliers that use IBM DOORS through Data Exchange for Jama Connect.”
Integration services. Jama Connect provides integration with key product development lifecycle tools.
Coexists with IBM DOORS. IBM DOORS is embedded in many organizations and may take some time to migrate completely. Progressive teams and divisions can get started on Jama Connect quickly while the larger organization works toward replacing existing programs over time. This approach is supported through a mix of integration, migration, and exchange services.

“Jama Connect lowers the complexity and burden of having to manually keep requirements, architecture and specifications all in sync and traced to each other. It’s a formidable problem that is virtually eliminated courtesy of Jama without the hassle of having to learn a clunky UI (IBM DOORS).” Alan M., Chief Product Officer

Jama Connect® created Live Traceability™ management which reduces project development risk by forming a digital thread through siloed development, test, and risk activities. The flexible platform is designed to support the end-to-end product development process with:

A simple, single repository so it’s easy for remote teams to gather, review and execute on requirements.
Structured reviews and collaboration — teams can elicit feedback, review product features in real-time with stakeholders and track critical decisions across teams and locations.
Change management throughout product development — end-to-end traceability and real-time collaboration improve visibility and make it easier to adapt to changes and track their impact.
Integrations across the ALM-PLM ecosystem.

Moving from IBM® DOORS® Next to Jama Connect® for Requirements Management

To adapt to shifting and ever-increasing challenges and complexities and keep pace with the competition, innovative organizations are now requiring best-in-class software to scale development, reduce risk, save time, and ensure compliance to quality and safety regulations.

Download this paper to learn how Jama Connect stands out above DOORS Next in the G2 Summer 2021 report for requirements management in the following areas:

Overall satisfaction
Implementation
User adoption
ROI

Go live with Jama Connect 2.7x faster than IBM® DOORS Next®

In Conclusion

Products, systems, and software development are only getting more complex and not modernizing your requirements management process will increase the probability of negative outcomes in your product development process.

As your team requires the ability to adapt, innovate, and grow, continuing to use IBM DOORS will become more difficult and will introduce significantly more risk in your product development process. Think about DOORS as a landline rotary phone that stopped being on the receiving end of upgrades after the industry switched to marketing push-button touchtone phones. (And now there are smartphones available, which are mobile and make you even more connected and productive.)

Transitioning to new technology provides your teams with the tools required to innovate, meet deadlines, and succeed. A modern requirements solution can help you to define, manage, and validate complex systems requirements while eliminating the risks and inefficiencies associated with documents and legacy systems.

Hear about the experiences of the more than 50 companies that have made the switch from IBM DOORS to Jama Connect.

Connect with us today to learn how you can enable end-to-end compliance, risk mitigation, and process improvement with our intuitive, award-winning requirements management platform.

To read this series in its entirety, visit this whitepaper: Why Move Away from IBM Doors Legacy and Why Now

In this post, we recap a recent webinar hosted by Jama Software on the topic of requirements traceability.

As the product and software development process grows in complexity, with more and more teams adding information, it is becoming increasingly difficult to track requirements throughout the development lifecycle and for stakeholders to get a clear view. Every decision can have an impact on the requirement or the product itself.

How do you prevent your organization from wasting time and resources, repeating research and searching for information, and how do you ensure that final deliverables tie in directly to the initial business needs?

That’s where requirements traceability becomes very important.

In this webinar, we walk through the challenges of requirements traceability and how you can utilize Jama Connect to overcome them. Watch the webinar to see how to provide backward and forward visibility for requirements, but also other information about the product you are building. You will also see how easy it is to do an impact analysis, to generate reports, and get an overview of how your requirements tie together.

Read the abbreviated transcript below or watch the recording to learn more about:

Best practices for requirements traceability in a modern solution
The easy and intuitive way you link your information in Jama Connect
How Jama Connect can be leveraged to help with impact analysis
Understanding suspects and traceability views

Martijn Jansson: When we talk about capturing data, we all know data in our organizations in different forms exist, so we have documents, and we have Excel sheets, and those Excel sheets contain rows and all those rows have the data around a certain requirement on a certain topic. Now, that’s all fine, but what we actually are after, what we really want from the system is information. Information gets created by building relationships and structure around those data assets in the system. When you do that, you basically empower your users and the ecosystem around you to find that information and to go along the relationship you build to get context on the data they are looking at.

Now, you can go a step higher with that, and that would be the top of the triangle is the knowledge part. The knowledge part means that you actually have to consider capturing the decision on the change you do on the information. We’ll touch you a little bit on that today, but that’s also in part a possibility in the Jama Connect.

The benefits of getting that information related, as I stated, you can trace those relations back to get to the source of where your data started, what was the first part that you actually started off from, what was the decision point, where did you start with capturing that requirement? Also, at a higher level, you can have an overview of what will happen when you change that specific part of information or piece of information. What will the ripple down effect be when I start changing that specific part?

And then on the learning part on the actual knowledge part, you want to capture the why of a change, so why did we change it? If you go back in time and you look at those changes, you can actually find back why you made the change and why you decided to, for instance, have a status changed or a requirement changed.

RELATED: G2 Names Jama Connect® the Leader in Requirements Management Software

And of course, you do not do that in your own ecosystem. You have many, many connections around you that have input on those decisions and have input on those connections, so engineering partners, customers, other departments within the company can be invited to take part in that process. We’ll take a look at that a little bit later on.

So, in the Jama Connect solution, we will take a look at the first part for data to information, so how do we actually relate information together and what is involved in building those relationships. And when I have them, what leverage, what value can and benefits can I get out of those relationships and what kind of overview do they give me? Now then, on the question part, we’ll take a little look as well on all the different areas where Jama Connect allows you to collaborate and to capture decisions and information on the changes you make during the process of building up your requirement.

Why would we do all these exercises in the system? What is the underlying question? There’s a number of questions we get on a daily basis from our customers when it comes to traceability, so questions like, did we miss anything? Are we building a product that is still complying to what we originally set out to do? What was the original requirement? Where do we start off from? Do we have everything covered when it comes to the validation or the actual testing of parts? The embracing change is something that a lot of customers are on different levels when it comes to how they approach change, but when you look at change, and actually before you do the change, you can see what will happen if you do change that item and what will happen if you start editing the information you have at the top level or at a medium level, it gives you a lot more insight into what will happen and what will the impact be for the organization. So, change becomes a bit more, let’s say, easier to look at and to decide what you want to do.

Then lastly, the validation part is one I highlighted. When I have all these items and places, information and plans, how can I go back and say, “Okay, I have everything validated. I have everything verified. I’m compliant to standards internally or external standards or processes that we set out to comply to.”

Watch the full webinar to learn more about best practices for requirements traceability.

In this post, we look at how Teledyne e2v leverages Jama Connect for improved communication and better risk management.

Teledyne e2v is a global leader in specialized components and subsystems for innovative solutions in medical, science, aerospace, defense, and industrial applications.

Over 1600 employees in countries across Europe, America, and Asia.
As a result of their track record of innovation and technological breakthroughs, Teledyne e2v continues to be involved in many high-profile ground-breaking programs

Teledyne e2v’s success is built on long-established relationships with industry partners. The combination of their strong, in-house technical capability and links with technical authorities and universities, ensures that they can bring together the right level of expertise for a diverse range of technical challenges.

They offer:

RF Power solutions for defense, medical, marine, industrial, and security applications
Imaging solutions including CCD and CMOS sensors and cameras, for space and earth observation, life science, machine vision, and medical applications
Semiconductor solutions for aerospace and defense hi-rel microprocessors, high speed data converters, and high reliability ICs

A Single Source of Truth Increases Product Development Efficiencies and Improves the Flow of Information for Teledyne e2v

To meet the challenge of producing components and systems with increasing complexity, Teledyne e2v turned to the easy-to-use Jama Connect platform to provide a single source of information and end-to-end traceability for some of their product development teams.

OBJECTIVES

Optimize information flow
Improve formal review process
Find a product development tool that would garner broad adoption

After selecting Jama Connect, Teledyne e2v saw these results

Time-Saving Efficiencies in Meeting and Decision Making

With the single source of truth and real-time structured collaboration that Jama Connect provides, the Teledyne e2v team has streamlined the development process resulting in increased cross-team efficiencies and expedited decision making.

Streamlining and Simplification of Tools

After determining that Jama Connect was a sensible, easy-to-use, and easy to adopt tool that would increase efficiencies, having a customer saying they were going to use Jama simply sealed the deal and is helping Teledyne e2v achieve their goal of streamlining and simplifying their tools and processes.

Jama Connect has enabled a focused model of engineering leadership, with identified owners of top-level vision, and a streamlined, single source of truth. This has shown strong potential to leave developers with greater freedom to manage the detailed development and implementation in-line with the vision that is clearly communicated and controlled within Jama Connect. Leveraging this further across all projects and product developments is a key ambition for the team.

Driving Systems Thinking Across the Organization

Teledyne e2v’s leadership knows that tackling complex engineering problems and projects requires a structured and systematic approach. They needed a tool that would support their engineers and technical specialists to work in a structured way—without the tool getting in the way. Jama Connect enables this and is helping to drive systems engineering discipline further into the team, not only standardizing the way people work, but making it a positive experience.

To see how the team is now leveraging Jama Connect and how their risk management process has already improved, read the full customer story here.

No organization can thrive for nearly 70 years without evolving its processes, and Finnish Red Cross Blood Service (FRCBS) is no exception. The FRCBS’s Vein-to-Vein project is a prime example of how the organization has evolved to meet the digital age in order to provide the best care possible for those in need.

In 2016, FRCBS began to build the Vein-to-Vein system, a new information system for blood supply chain that covers blood donation and blood product manufacture, storage, and delivery to hospitals nationwide. Blood test results are also integrated into the information system. For the Vein-to-Vein information system project to be successful, data on blood products must work together seamlessly and the chain of data must remain unbroken, making the need for end-to-end traceability an incredibly important component.

This was one of many reasons the FRCBS began their search for a requirements and test management solution that could help them manage the complexity of the project. Their current test management solution, a pieced together system of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word documents, could not link risks and requirements to testing. Traceability was lacking, and the team knew the project’s success hinged on a solution that could clearly trace stakeholder requirements through testing, verification, and validation.

Like most organizations in 2020, FRCBS are working remotely throughout the country. Communication and collaboration were top priorities for the team. They knew that version control and review cycles would be compromised if they continued to use Excel and Word for their requirements and test management.

With the Vein-to-Vein information system, we are building the foundation for the digital future of the blood supply chain. It was abundantly clear to us that Word and Excel could not handle the amount of test cases and plans this project required.”

– Susanna Pöhö Development Manager, Digital Services at FRCBS

Finnish Red Cross Blood Services Sees Improved Traceability, Communication, and Collaboration

In June of 2018 FRCBS began onboarding Jama Connect and with the help of CGI Finland — and Jama Software’s easy-to-use platform — they were up and running in 6 months. The FRCBS now uses Jama Connect for testing and risk management.

FRCBS estimates that the testing team has improved their communication and collaboration by 50%, and with the improved communication, the team estimates that their review cycles have been shortened by 80%.

“With Jama Connect, we can link high-level system requirements and risks and test cases. Jama Connect makes it possible to ensure the test cases cover the entire information system, and nothing is being overlooked.”

– Susanna Majuri, System Specialist at FRCBS

Jama Connect has enabled improved end-to-end traceability and test management and allowed the teams to put more efficient processes in place. Because of Jama Connect, FRCBS estimates that the testing team has improved their communication and collaboration by 50%, and with the improved communication, the team estimates that their review cycles have been shortened by 80%.

Audit Preparation Simplified and Shortened

While the system is not technically a CE-marked medical device, the Vein-to-Vein system must meet high quality standards, including GxP quality guidelines and other key regulations. Jama Connect has allowed them to easily demonstrate compliance in a digital format. The FRCBS team estimates that Jama Connect has helped reduce audit preparation time by more than 50%.

“Jama Connect plays a central role in our audit process. We’re able to easily show executed tests, and the whole hierarchy of high-level system requirements, risks, test cases, and scenarios,” said Pöhö.

Finnish Red Cross’ Digital Future with Jama Connect

As the Finnish Red Cross organization continues its efforts to digitize development projects, FRCBS sets a great example with their implementation of Jama Connect.

“We implemented Jama Connect in the middle of large-scale information system project. Our only regret is that we didn’t implement it sooner in the project so we could leverage Jama Connect’s full capabilities,” said Pöhö. “In the future, it will be easier once we widen the range of usage across the organization.” “We’d like to broaden our use of Jama Connect across the company, especially for testing and validation. It’s a new, modern way of working that’s improved our processes immensely,” said Pöhö.

To see more information about the importance of traceability in complex product development, we’ve compiled a handy list of valuable resources for you!

SEE MORE RESOURCES

Traceability is the ability to track upstream and downstream relationships between requirements and other artifacts, ranging from test cases to higher-level system or subsystem requirements. Through end-to-end traceability, teams can see if a product’s development process is currently on track, as well as view any and all of the history and context associated with it.

That’s the ideal, at least.

Where Traceability Can Come Up Short – And How to Fix It

Traditionally, traceability has been performed using document-based workflows involving applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel. A team member creates a traceability matrix in a text document or spreadsheet and updates it manually throughout the product development lifecycle. Unfortunately, this approach has distinct limitations and is prone to error.

When teams trace requirements within discrete and static documents, they often create extra work for themselves, while also running the risk of missing out on critical updates or making mistakes.

Let’s say someone updates a matrix in Excel with the latest statuses of test cases related to a medical device that’s in development. It might seem like everything is proceeding smoothly on the surface, but multiple problems could be lurking underneath:

Human Error

Since everything is done by hand, this individual must regularly revisit the matrix to keep it in sync and up to date with product development activities across the whole organization. The complexity of the traceability matrix in question – with its numerous tables showing how requirements and test cases connect to one another – makes such work inherently complicated and error-prone.

Email-Centric Collaboration

Meanwhile, these updates to the matrix are primarily communicated via email. Between the normal flow of messages into everyone’s inboxes, people being out of the office, and other complications -like poor version control – and mishandling of incorporating everyone’s comments, it is likely that errors will occur and misunderstanding will necessitate rework down the line.

No Built-In Compliance

Finally, even if everything goes according to plan, there’s no guarantee that the traceability workflows in use will account for all relevant requirements and risks. For instance, in the case of a medical device, a matrix created within Excel won’t come with frameworks aligned with industry standards like ISO 14971, making it more difficult to ensure coordinated traceability and ensure successful proof of compliance.

Fortunately, these types of issues don’t have to hold your teams back and expose your product development processes to undue risk. End-to-end traceability is possible by upgrading from document-oriented workflows to a comprehensive requirements management platform that enables real-time collaboration, bidirectional traceability, and integrated risk management.

Let’s look at four central benefits of implementing end-to-end traceability with a solution like Jama Connect®.

1. Holistic, Actionable Visibility into Requirements and Stakeholders

Traceability is ultimately about relationships, not just between requirements and other artifacts, but between all of those items and the people responsible for managing them. With end-to-end traceability in place, teams can see:

How requirements trace forward to their implementations within work products, along with how those products trace back to original requirements and designs.
How all requirements were tested – i.e., the test cases linked to them, whether the tests passed or failed, and any associated defects identified along the way.
Who was involved in the development of specific requirements and test runs, so that they can be notified right away about necessary next steps or actions required.

This comprehensive visibility creates a system of action – one that teams can use to not only trace the life of each artifact but to initiate the appropriate activities to sustain product development and ensure coverage. Is a medical device safe to use? Does it comply with applicable standards? Can the processes used for building it stand up under an audit? A full-fledged traceability solution provides clear answers to these questions and others.

2. Better Impact Analysis of Changes

Truly informed impact analysis isn’t possible without end-to-end traceability. That’s because such analysis is rooted in being able to see how specific changes to an artifact will affect other items connected to it. Knowing those impacts requires traceability.

In traditional document-based workflows, it can be difficult to know how different items are affected by change. But in a platform with end-to-end traceability, much of this work is automated and becomes a byproduct of your daily work. The solution will instantly flag downstream links as “suspect” so that teams can attend to them as needed.

For example, teams can see if an altered requirement has test cases downstream and what share of them have passed – all in real time. This setup saves immense time and effort compared to manual processes.

3. Easier Identification of Gaps in Test Coverage

Speaking of tests, a requirement is typically only considered “covered” if it has corresponding test cases against it, as well as test engineers assigned to it. But too often, gaps in coverage only become apparent after the fact, when a product issue reveals how a key flaw was overlooked during development.

In fields with rapid change and innovation, such as medical device development and automotive manufacturing, any unidentified coverage gaps are risky to end users and costly to remediate. Improved tracking of test coverage in a platform with end-to-end traceability helps eliminate these blind spots and ensure quality.

More specifically, this level of traceability within a requirements management solution helps test engineers and project managers visualize where gaps exist and whether tests have been approved, completed, rejected, or drafted. As a result, product development becomes less risky overall.

4. Simplified, More Accurate Audit Passage

“Show your work” is a familiar adage to anyone who’s completed a mathematics assignment, and it is crucial advice when tracing requirements, too. Passing an audit will require presenting specific information about those requirements, in formats acceptable to reviewers and regulators.

A platform like Jama Connect simplifies this process by letting teams show clear supporting evidence of comprehensive traceability. It provides export templates like trace reports to provide this evidence, simplifying regulatory submissions and the audit process.

Jama Connect’s Requirements Management Enables Live Traceability™ Across Your Development Process.

Bridge engineering siloes across development, test, and risk activities. Provide end-to-end compliance, risk mitigation, and process improvement with our intuitive, award-winning requirements management platform. Learn more!

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