Tag Archive for: Jama Connect Platform

Jama Connect® Named as the 2025 TrustRadius Top Rated Winner in Requirements Management

Jama Connect Named as the 2025 TrustRadius Top Rated Winner in Requirements Management

We are thrilled to announce that Jama Connect has been honored as a 2025 TrustRadius Top Rated Award winner in the “Requirements Management” category! This recognition underscores our commitment to delivering industry-leading tools that empower teams to efficiently manage requirements and associated processes. But what makes this achievement particularly meaningful is that this award is based entirely on the candid feedback of those who use Jama Connect in real-world scenarios.

Why the TrustRadius Top Rated Award Matters

The TrustRadius Top Rated Awards are among the most trusted accolades in the B2B technology space. Unlike analyst-driven awards, these honors are determined exclusively by verified customer reviews. To win, products must meet strict criteria, including a high volume of positive reviews, consistent high ratings, and a strong trScore, which evaluates reviews for quality, recency, and depth.

Earning this recognition signifies that Jama Connect excels in meeting the needs of our users, as acknowledged by the very people who rely on our solution to deliver remarkable outcomes.

Reflecting on the Value of Jama Connect

Jama Connect is a trusted partner for teams navigating complex development projects across industries. Whether it’s supporting product innovation in aerospace, ensuring compliance in highly regulated medical fields, or improving efficiency in agile software development, Jama Connect provides the tools necessary for collaboration, traceability, and success.

Here’s what some of our customers have to say about their experience:

“Jama Connect has the best UI compared to DOORS, Codebeamer, and [PTC Integrity]. It’s the clearest to use with the best usability. For example, making traces between requirements is as straightforward as clicking a button. The trace matrix view is highly configurable to show anything you need.” (Verified User, Medical Device Company)

“We are using Jama Connect to be more than just a requirements management tool – we are using Jama Connect as the single source of truth to contain not just the requirements, but also the why and how the system is the way it is. It helps us engage stakeholders, both junior and senior, due to its user-friendly interface.” (Chris Armstrong, Lead Systems Engineer, JFD)

“We use Jama [Connect] for centralized requirements administration of sector-wide projects and development. The intuitive review module and quick-marking features make managing requirements seamless.” (Verified Professional, Oil & Energy Company)

These testimonials illustrate Jama Connect’s powerful impact on our users’ workflows and show why teams across the globe trust us as their go-to solution for requirements management.

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

Customer Feedback Drives Our Innovation

At Jama Software, we consider user feedback to be a critical component of our development process. We consistently listen to customers and translate their insights into actionable improvements. One reviewer highlighted this commitment, stating:

“We pretty much use it (Jama Connect) for the entire software development lifecycle and utilize its review/approval and baselining system for our controlled documents.”

Our agility and dedication to continuous improvement help ensure that Jama Connect remains a market leader to support evolving customer needs.

Why Organizations Choose Jama Connect

What differentiates Jama Connect is not just its robust features but the way it revolutionizes how teams manage the product lifecycle. By bringing stakeholders together and enabling clear, traceable processes, we make it easy for organizations to focus on outcomes, even in the most challenging and regulated environments. Key benefits include:

  1. Live Traceability™: A hallmark of Jama Connect, this feature enables teams to maintain real-time visibility into the interconnections between requirements, decisions, and test cases, ensuring that everyone is working with up-to-date information.
  2. Streamlined Regulatory Compliance: Simplify alignment with frameworks like ISO 26262 and FDA 21 CFR Part 11 using Jama Connect’s built-in templates and automated tracking.
  3. Collaboration at Scale: Empower distributed teams with tools like stakeholder commenting, intuitive workflows, and export functionality to foster engagement and decision-making.

These features have been widely acknowledged by our customers, including one who shared:

“The export tools to PDF and Word for our regulatory needs have saved us a ton of time. We use Jama Connect for risk management, validation, and planning. It’s well organized and helps streamline collaboration across teams.”

RELATED: The Benefits of Jama Connect: Supercharge Your Systems Development and Engineering Process

What’s Next for Jama Connect?

Winning the 2025 TrustRadius Top Rated Award inspires us to continue innovating and elevating the Jama Connect experience. We are actively working on updates that incorporate more automation, deeper analytics, and enhanced user experiences, helping customers tackle emerging challenges with efficiency and confidence.

We’re always listening to your feedback and using it to make Jama Connect even better. Our goal is to keep evolving alongside your needs and ensure it stays the go-to tool for requirements management.

Experience the Future of Requirements Management

This recognition solidifies why thousands of professionals trust Jama Connect to guide their projects to success. If you haven’t yet discovered what sets our platform apart, now is the time.

Whether you’re seeking to improve compliance, streamline product development, or simplify communication across teams, Jama Connect has the solution you need.

A Heartfelt Thank You

To our incredible community of users, thank you for making this milestone possible. Your trust and feedback inspire us to push boundaries and continue delivering tools that help your teams thrive. This achievement is as much yours as it is ours, and we look forward to supporting you for years to come.

Here’s to more innovation, collaboration, and success together.
Start your free trial of Jama Connect today!

Self-Hosted and Cloud: Flexible Deployment Options for Your Requirements Management with Jama Software

Self-Hosted and Cloud: Flexible Deployment Options for Your Requirements Management with Jama Software

Efficient requirements management is vital for the success of any organization, especially in industries like aerospace, defense, and government, where compliance, security, and accuracy are paramount. Jama Software provides a sophisticated and adaptable requirements management solution, ensuring that your teams stay ahead in competitive and highly regulated fields.

But did you know that Jama Connect® isn’t only available as a cloud solution? Depending on your organization’s unique needs, you can also choose a self-hosted deployment option. This flexibility is the perfect answer for industries requiring strict data sovereignty, air-gapped environments, or regulatory compliance.

While Jama Connect is well-known for our cloud deployment option, we actually originated as a self-hosted product more than twenty years ago. And two decades later, we remain committed to delivering the best platform and customer experience for our self-hosted and cloud customers.

Curious about which deployment option best suits your business? This post will break down when to choose Jama Connect Cloud versus the self-hosted deployment. We’ll also answer frequently asked questions to help you make informed decisions.

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

When to Choose Jama Software Cloud vs. Self-Hosted

Jama Connect Cloud and Jama Connect Self-Hosted both empower effective requirements management. However, certain use cases demand one option over the other.

Jama Connect Cloud

Best for organizations that value ease of deployment, automatic updates, and seamless access. Key benefits include:

  • Automatic Updates and Maintenance: Benefit from the latest features and security enhancements without manual effort.
  • Anywhere, Anytime Access: Teams can access data on-demand, enabling global collaboration without roadblocks.
  • Cost Efficiency: Eliminate the need for large IT infrastructure spendings; we handle hosting for you.
  • Geographically Distributed Hosting: To ensure reliability and security, Jama Software hosts data in highly secure and strategic cloud locations. For customers in the US, we host data in Oregon, with a backup in Ohio. For EMEA customers, data will not leave the EU in line with GDPR. Two copies of the data is hosted in Ireland, with a backup in Germany.

Ideal for industries like tech startups, mid-sized enterprises, and companies prioritizing agility and scalability in requirements management.

Jama Connect Self-Hosted

Organizations working in highly regulated industries often need tighter control over their data. This deployment ensures robust security and customization on your own infrastructure. Benefits include:

  • Data Sovereignty: Maintain control of sensitive data and ensure compliance with local regulations.
  • Air-Gapped Environments: Operate without internet connectivity, ideal for sectors like aerospace and defense that mandate offline solutions.
  • Regulatory Compliance: Handle development processes under strict standards like ITAR, ECJU, and EAR.

Ideal for industries such as government, aerospace, and defense, where security and compliance are non-negotiable.

Jama Connect Deployment Options

Jama Connect ensures that your needs are met, whether you lean toward cloud solutions or prefer in-house deployment. Here’s how Jama Connect offers robust flexibility in deployment:

Cloud Deployment

Our cloud-based SaaS solution takes the burden of infrastructure management off your shoulders. It ensures faster setup, seamless updates, and scalability as your teams grow. Collaborate easily across distributed teams while we manage the heavy lifting of security and operational efficiency.

Self-Hosted Deployment

Need control down to the last detail? Self-host Jama Connect within your IT infrastructure. This option provides your team with complete autonomy over data, operational configuration, and security measures. Your infrastructure, your rules.

Do you have questions about configuring a self-hosted deployment? Our experts are here to help. Schedule a consultation to explore the best option for your business.

RELATED: Jama Connect Amazon Web Service (AWS) GovCloud US Hosting

FAQ: Common Questions About Jama Software Deployment Options

Still not sure which deployment is right for you? Below are answers to some frequently asked questions.

Is switching between Jama Connect Cloud and Self-Hosted possible?

Yes, we offer migration support to ensure your data transitions smoothly between deployment types when upgrading or restructuring operations.

Do both deployments support compliance with industry standards?

Absolutely! Whether cloud-based or on-premises, Jama Connect supports compliance with requirements like ISO 26262, DO-178C, DO-254, and other critical regulatory standards. Your choice of deployment will not limit compliance functionality.

What level of IT support is required for the self-hosted deployment?

Self-hosted deployments require your organization to manage backups, updates, and server maintenance. However, we provide technical guidance to your IT teams to ensure a smooth setup.

Does the cloud option support multi-location teams?

Yes! With the cloud deployment, all team members, regardless of their geographic location, can work collaboratively without latency or access issues.

What security measures are in place for both deployment options?

  • For Cloud: Ongoing updates, SOC2 certification, and AWS GovCloud hosting ensure enterprise-grade security.
  • For Self-Hosted: You’ll adhere to your internal security protocols (including CMMC security requirements) and configurations.

Jama Software Provides a Smarter Approach to Requirements Management

When it comes to requirements management, there’s no “one-size-fits-all.” Jama Connect adapts to your unique organizational needs, whether you need a hands-off cloud solution or an air-gapped, team-managed infrastructure.

Experience seamless collaboration, reduce compliance risks, and ensure stakeholder alignment across your organization with Jama Software. Are you ready to optimize your requirements management process?

Explore our deployment options and see how Jama Connect aligns with your vision of compliance, security, and efficiency.

Learn More About Jama Software’s Deployment Options

Improve Traceability and Enhance Coverage with Live Trace Explorer™

Engineering teams today face growing challenges in maintaining requirement coverage, managing risks, and making informed, data-driven decisions,  all while working with siloed tools and tight deadlines. Simply meeting the minimum traceability requirements isn’t enough to stay competitive.

Live Trace Explorer™ helps teams visualize end-to-end trace relationships, identify gaps, validate coverage, and ensure quality in real time. With advanced filtering capabilities, you can focus on what matters most to keep your projects on track, compliant, and aligned with traceability best practices.

In this session, host Francis Trudeau will show you how Live Trace Explorer enables engineering teams to visualize trace relationships, validate coverage, pinpoint gaps, and ensure quality, all in real-time. You’ll also learn how advanced filtering capabilities help you focus on what matters most, while aligning your traceability practices with industry best practices.

What You’ll Learn:

  • The vision behind Live Trace Explorer and its evolution
  • How to use filtering to enhance clarity, control, and support traceability best practices
  • Strategies for leveraging traceability to manage risk and ensure compliance
  • This is your chance to gain actionable insights, contribute to the evolution of traceability tools, and stay ahead in managing risk and compliance.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Francis Trudeau: My name is Francis Trudeau, and I’m a Product Manager at Jama Software. I’m also a curious Scout leader who thrives in the great outdoors and enjoys a good story. Now, picture me as a hiker standing at the foot of a mountain, and that mountain represents the path of development, the climb towards a vision that guides our every step. My specific role is to give you a clearer, elevated view, helping you navigate your projects from start to finish, measuring progress, and managing risks along the way. The summit of the mountain represents that ideal, managing the development process through data. In other words, making decisions based on available information, think metrics, graphics, trend lines, dashboards, etc. But like any true vision, it’s not just a destination. It’s a challenge. Can we even get there? Is there a taller peak hidden behind this one? That mystery is part of the adventure.

In today’s webinar, I invite you to tag along on this journey. I’ll show you the progress we’ve made so far, offer a glimpse of the path ahead and share how you can contribute to making this vision a reality. So we are set for a journey, and our first milestone along the way is the Live Trace Explorer, which is essentially a visual dynamic representation of the V-Model for evaluating coverage, addressing gaps and managing associated risks. Focusing on the diagram, each tile represents a component or set connected with trace paths. These paths are gray if there are no relationships between the items in adjacent tiles and they turn green and red to indicate the number of valid or suspect relationships between those tiles.

On the right side, the verifications and validations branch shows the number of test cases linked to items within the container on its left no matter where they appear in the project. At the bottom of each tile, you’ll find a metric representing the ratio of those test cases included in a test plan.

On the requirements side, the top part of each tile displays stats including the number of items by type and any open conversations. In the bottom half, you’ll find coverage metrics, essentially the ratio of existing relationships to expected ones as defined by the Traceability Information Model.

Overall, the Life Trace Explorer is meant to expose the coverage completeness as the ratio of existing over expected relationships and a measure of the validity of relationships by exposing a metric of suspect relationships between related items included in two adjacent tiles. By creating a diagram for a simple project, one can easily get a big picture of a project, spot gaps, and keep track of progress. Beautiful, isn’t it? Are we there yet?

Well, not quite. As we catch our breath and take in the view, it becomes clear that the view, while impressive, is a little foggy. We’ve reached a breathtaking lookout. The elevated view is structured, informative, even beautiful, but for many of the customers we’ve consulted, the information still feels cloudy. Yes, the coverage percentage and suspect indicators are valuable. They give us a sense of direction, but there’s a key limitation. The Life Trace Explorer currently measures everything without distinction. In real projects, not every item should count towards coverage. To get a metric that truly reflects reality, we need the ability to focus, to filter in only the relevant items and filter out the noise. Only then can we sharpen the view and get a clearer, more meaningful measure of completeness.

RELATED: Requirements Traceability Benchmark

Trudeau: Let’s take a look at a few real examples customers have shared with us. The first one is about filtering out items that shouldn’t be included in coverage. For instance, many teams keep items in their project that were originally considered but later rejected. They’re still useful for historical context, but they don’t need to be part of the coverage calculation. The same goes for draft items. They’re still in progress and not ready to be measured yet.

The second example is about narrowing the scope. Sometimes teams want to measure coverage or track suspect links only for a specific slice of the project. A good example is when using prioritization methods like MoSCoW, where a team may only want to focus on must-have items.

Another example is when tailoring views for different stakeholders, say admins, primary users, or partners, and only showing what’s relevant to each group. Now, Jama Connect® is highly configurable, so these are just a few common examples. What matters here is that the filtering we’ve added to the Live Trace Explorer works with any picklist field and only picklists for now. So with that in mind, let’s jump into Jama Connect and see how it works.

Here we are in the ACME demo project. The Traceability Information Model or TIM flows simply from left to right, starting with higher-level needs, then moving down to requirements and designs. Each of these is validated and verified by test items. It’s a straightforward setup that follows the logic of the V-Model.

To begin, we’ll generate a diagram for the entire project and open the Trace Score™ calculator so we can keep track of the metrics used in the calculation. Our first filter will focus on the design items. Right now, we have three designs, and the coverage is showing 66%. Let’s take a closer look. In our project, each design has a status chosen from a picklist: draft under review, approved or rejected. One of them is currently marked as rejected. We’re going to apply a filter to ignore rejected designs. To do this, open the configuration settings, open the configuration applied to the specification tiles, click the funnel icon to set the filter, set the rule using the picklist field for design status, in the second drop-down choose is not equal to, then select rejected, set the filter, and apply. We now have two items instead of three. Coverage for the items that matter is 100%, and the Trace Score is updated accordingly. Also, notice the funnel icon. It shows that a filter is now applied to this item type in this tile.

Next, let’s move to the requirements. At ACME, we use the MoSCoW method to prioritize them. Suppose we want to focus only on the must-have items. We’d apply a similar filter as we did for designs. Here we have four requirement items, but only one is marked as must. Back in the diagram, we follow the same steps to set the filter. Before I hit apply, you can probably guess the item count will drop to one, but watch what happens with the suspect and coverage metrics. We now notice a clear coverage gap with the designs. On the verification side, test cases are linked, but they’re not included in a test plan yet. As for the suspects, there are three needs pointing to this must requirement, and one of those needs has changed, which makes the relationship suspect.

For our last example, let’s look at those needs. Each one is tagged with one or more user groups. Let’s say we only want to measure the needs relevant to partners. We go back to the configuration panel. Since this is a multi-select picklist, our rule options are contains and does not contain. We choose the content and select a partner. Before I hit apply, pay attention to the suspect links, the test metrics, and open conversations. See that all these related metrics are refreshed to only consider information from filtered items.

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

Trudeau: To wrap up, this configured filtered diagram gives us a Trace Score specifically for the partner’s needs, focusing on must requirements and excluding rejected designs. Finally, we can save this configuration, for example, as ACME for Partner, so we can return to it later.

That was a quick tour of how Live Trace Explorer filtering works, a simple, flexible way to sharpen your focus and configure what you actually want to measure. Now let’s talk about what’s next. Filters will be available to all cloud customers in Jama Connect 9.24 scheduled for release in the coming weeks. In July, Live Trace Explorer will be part of our customer-validated cloud rollout, and note that this version is based on Jama Connect 9.22, so filters won’t be included in that CBC release. For self-hosted customers, Live Trace Explorer with filtering will be available later this fall. Our team remains fully dedicated to the future development of Live Trace Explorer, and this includes further refinements on filters, specifically developing nested filters, supporting and or clauses for more than one filtering rule. Remember in the demo when I excluded rejected designs, what if I wanted to exclude draft or rejected designs? The nested filters will allow for this sort of logic.

Beyond these near-term improvements, we are exploring ideas inspired by customer feedback, ways to make Live Trace Explorer even more configurable and actionable. Driving action is about clicking a metric to drill into a filtered trace view, showing only items with missing coverage, suspect links or open conversations. Tailoring is about tailoring the diagram layout itself, hiding irrelevant tiles or reordering them for clarity or to reveal suspect status between different locations. We’re also looking beyond the diagram towards future metrics that can help you manage your projects with confidence.

When the team brainstormed avenues for the Live Trace Explorer, many possible metrics were envisioned. Trend lines over time to tell the story of your project and identify bottlenecks. Coverage gaps per item owner to visualize specific user. What about an item status breakdown? Is this worth monitoring? And what do you think of the relationship health for visualizing change and rework? Is a measure of aging for suspects interesting? What about test execution status? Not just test coverage? These are just a few examples, and of course, we’re always looking for more ideas, but the metrics that really matter are the ones aligned with your goals. I guess the question is, what do you want to manage? What do you want to measure?

Jama Connect is already helping teams bridge requirements and testing, but we want to support you further with insights that reflect your priorities, your goals, and your way of working, so here’s my invitation. Join us in this journey. If the idea of managing the development process through data resonates with you, if you’re excited about defining and evolving the right metrics, if you want a map and compass of your mountain climb, a way to see not just where you are but where you’re going, then let’s keep the conversation going. Reach out to your customer success manager, ask to connect with product management, and help shape the future of Live Trace Explorer and the tools that power your work.

WATCH THE ENTIRE WEBINAR HERE:
Improve Traceability and Enhance Coverage with Live Trace Explorer™

[Webinar Recap] Agile, Compliant, Competitive: Fast-Tracking Consumer Electronics Innovation

Deliver Faster. Stay Compliant. Stay Ahead.

Overcome complexity in consumer electronics development without compromising quality.

In the race to bring innovative consumer electronics to market, even small delays can lead to lost revenue, missed windows, and a shrinking competitive edge. At the same time, fast-changing regulations, global supply chains, and growing demands around cybersecurity, sustainability, and safety are making development more challenging than ever.

In this webinar recap blog, join Jama Software experts Patrick Garman and Yannick Selg for a practical discussion on how to integrate compliance into your development workflow in order to achieve full traceability, streamline variant management, and speed up time to market.

What You’ll Learn

  • Implement compliance as part of a unified workflow for a single source of truth
  • Ensure end-to-end traceability, connecting supply chain inputs to requirements
  • Manage product variants seamlessly with advanced reuse strategies
  • Scale traceability across your entire digital thread for improved alignment

 

Patrick Garman: Hi, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us for today’s session. Agile, Compliant, Competitive: Fast-Tracking Consumer Electronics Innovation. I’m Patrick Garman, and I manage professional solutions for consumer electronics here at Jama Software. I’m excited to be joined today by my colleague Yannick Selg, one of our Senior Solutions Architects. Together, we’ll explore what it takes to succeed in the fast-paced, high-stakes world of consumer electronics development.

The consumer electronics industry is one of the most dynamic out there, driven by innovation, defined by short lifecycles, and shaped by intense competition. A must-have device today can become obsolete in a matter of months. This creates enormous pressure, not just to innovate but to deliver quickly and get it right the first time. And development is no longer linear, it’s fast-paced, global, and layered. And while speed to market is essential, navigating the increasingly complex regulatory environment is just as critical. The bar for compliance isn’t just higher, it’s shifting under our feet.

So, here’s how we’re going to break this down today. First, we’ll explore how rapid innovation is reshaping development cycles and how teams can keep up without burning out. Then we’ll examine the regulatory landscape and what it takes to build compliance into your development process from the start. Next, we’ll look at the challenge of maintaining quality and compliance while accelerating delivery. We’ll share practical strategies and tools to help your teams move faster without compromising rigor, including how Jama Connect® supports modular design, regulatory traceability, and smarter collaboration.

Finally, Yannick will provide a live demo of Jama Connect, showing how our platform streamlines and accelerates your product development process without sacrificing quality. If there’s one message to take away today, it’s this. Innovation is not just about what’s new. It’s about navigating complexity with confidence. Developing innovative consumer electronics is difficult. Even under the best conditions, these products are incredibly complex. Even in a stable environment, managing requirements across disciplines, hardware, software, UX, compliance is challenging. But in reality, we’re rarely working in a stable environment. We are constantly navigating shifting market trends, emerging technologies, global supply chain fluctuations and evolving regulations. Add in social and geopolitical disruptions and it’s no surprise that teams often find themselves tripping over their own processes, not due to a lack of talent or effort but because the complexity outpaces the tools they’re using to manage it.

RELATED: The Top Challenges in Industrial Manufacturing and Consumer Electronic Development

Garman: Here’s what we often hear from customers before they adopt Jama Connect. Things like, “We keep building the wrong thing because requirements weren’t clear or accessible,” or, “Engineering is out of sync with compliance,” or, “We didn’t realize we missed a requirement until testing, or worse, after launch.” Sound familiar? These are not just anecdotes, these are measurable pain points. 62% of companies have been reprimanded or fined by regulatory agencies. 83% of design teams cite immature requirements management as the root cause of project failures. And roughly one-third of a typical product development budget is spent on unplanned work. Things like rework, defect resolution, or scrambling to address gaps that could have been caught earlier. And here’s the bottom line. A six-month delay can result in a 33% loss in potential revenue.

That’s not just a product issue; that’s a business issue. The takeaway is clear. Without a structured collaborative requirements management approach, you’re not just risking quality, you’re risking profitability, compliance, and your speed to market.

Let’s start with the simple truth. Speed matters. If you’re late to market even by a few months, you’ve already lost ground, lost revenue, lost mindshare, and lost relevance. But here’s the challenge. Today’s breakthrough is tomorrow’s baseline. Innovation doesn’t slow down. The pressure to stay ahead pushes teams to take risks and move fast. But fast alone is not enough. Today’s development isn’t clean or consequential. It’s global, concurrent and complex. Hardware might be built in one country, software in another with compliance teams spread across all time zones. All of that coordination has to happen in real time. Meanwhile, regulations might evolve mid-cycle. A product that met requirements at design freeze may fall out of compliance before it ships. That finish line keeps moving. So yes, fast is good, but flawless is better. Success means not just getting to market, but getting there with a product that meets expectations across the board; technical, legal and consumer. That’s what we’ll unpack throughout this session. How to balance agility with accuracy and move quickly without breaking things.

We’re developing products in a world where innovation is constant and accelerating. AI, automation, personalization, these aren’t high-end features anymore. They are expected. Devices are no longer isolated, they’re connected, adaptive and increasingly intelligent. This raises the bar and the complexity. Development cycles are now parallel, not sequential. Hardware, firmware, AI models, mobile apps, supplier planning, everything is happening at once and feeding into each other. The only way to manage this pace is with agile cross-functional workflows. Compatibility is another hurdle. Whether it’s Matter, Alexa, Google Home, your product must play nicely in a connected ecosystem. Standards like USBC don’t just reflect technical choices that reflect regulatory pressure and consumer expectations.

And it’s not just technology that’s shifting. The market itself is transforming. Boundaries between industries are disappearing. A fitness tracker is now a health monitor and a social device. Do self-driving cars belong to the automotive industry or consumer electronics? That blurring of categories brings new competition and new risk. Add to this geopolitical disruption, chip shortages, trade regulations. And you’re not just designing for a performance, you’re designing for resilience. The takeaway? Speed still wins, but only when it’s paired with flexibility. It’s time to stop asking how fast can we ship and start asking how well can we adapt? Of course, building great products is hard. Making them legal, safe and certifiable, even harder. Regulatory complexity isn’t just growing, it’s fragmenting. Every region brings a different rule book. Europe has CE Marking, RoHS, REACH and the WEEE Directive. And now, the Cyber Resilience Act and AI Act are adding new layers of cybersecurity and transparency expectations.

The U.S. is more decentralized. The FCC rules govern emissions. UL handles safety. And states like California are adding laws like CCPA that impact product labeling and data handling. China requires CCC certification, local testing, cybersecurity reviews, and strict data localization policies. And that’s just a few markets. Here’s the kicker. Even a minor design change like swapping out a chip can trigger retesting and recertification. That’s time, money, and launch risk. So, compliance is not a checklist, it’s a discipline that has to be embedded from the beginning. Get it right and you move confidently. Get it wrong and you risk delays, recalls, fines, or even exclusion from key markets. To be clear, in this industry, compliance is a product feature.

RELATED: Eliminate Gaps and Risks with Proven Traceability Best Practices

Garman: We’ve all heard the phrase “move fast and break things,” but in regulated high-stakes product development, that mindset can backfire. Yes, speed to market is important. Yes, regulatory compliance is non-negotiable. But getting there first with a buggy product, that’s a fast track to customer dissatisfaction and reputational damage. As this chart illustrates, the later a defect is found, the more expensive it is to fix, not just in dollars but in lost time and market opportunity. A defect that’s missed in integration testing might cost 40 times more to resolve in system testing. If it makes it to acceptance testing, that cost jumps to 110 times. And if the issue is discovered after launch, you’re not just paying in engineering hours, you’re paying in trust. That’s why verification and validation can’t be an afterthought. They must be built into every phase of development. And quality is not just about testing. It starts with the clarity and completeness of your requirements. Are your teams writing precise, actionable requirements? Do you have traceability across development artifacts to ensure nothing is missed? Do you have review stage gates with all stakeholders? That means bringing in legal, compliance, security and business teams early, even if you think they’ll just slow things down.

High-performing teams invest in both product quality and process quality because the cost of getting it wrong grows with every step forward. So, the question isn’t speed, compliance or quality, it’s how do we build all three into our process so that we can control complexity before it controls us. This means breaking down silos. Engineering, compliance, manufacturing, support, these teams can’t operate in isolation. They need shared visibility and synchronized workflows. Provide visibility and transparency early and you’ll discover what you don’t know much faster and avoid having to backtrack later when it’s more expensive. And reuse what works. You don’t have to start from scratch each time. You can reuse validated IP, swappable components with their requirements and even test cases to move faster without increasing risk.

Testing also has to evolve. Coverage gaps are the silent killers. Traceability from requirements to validation ensures you’re testing the right things and finding gaps before your customers do. And testing should be continuous, not a final step. Validation is part of development, not the end of it. The bottom line: speed without structure is guesswork. Speed with discipline is leadership. So, how do you implement all of this? That’s where Jama Connect comes in. Jama Connect is purpose-built to help consumer electronics product teams move faster while staying aligned and compliant.

Here’s how. Streamlining your regulatory compliance. Jama Connect enables teams to reuse standards across projects and push updates automatically from a central source of truth. And track which projects are falling behind or are out of compliance using comparison views. For modular design and reuse, standards are not the only reusable artifacts in Jama Connect. Library projects allow you to easily manage requirements for reusable or swappable components and product variants, complete with linked test cases.

RELATED: IEC 61508 Overview: The Complete Guide for Functional Safety in Industrial Manufacturing

Garman: Reuse accelerates development and reduces redundant validation so you can focus on what’s truly new. Jama Connect also supports you in spreading your traceability across the digital thread. You can create a real-time data connection between Jama Connect and Jira using Jama Connect Interchange™ to trace requirements to development activities and have the current status for all tasks visible with your requirements. Also, Jama Connect’s best-in-class REST API extends that interoperability even further across your toolchain. You get end-to-end traceability from ideation to requirements to tests from risks to releases. Jama Connect also builds in quality insights. Tools like Live Trace Explorer™ show where your project has trace gaps or low maturity and provides you with a score for your project coverage completeness. Jama Connect Advisor™ provides real-time guidance on requirement clarity, helping you catch issues before they cascade and quantifies the maturity of your requirements so that you can measure improvement.

With Jama Connect, you’re not just documenting development, you’re orchestrating it. You gain clarity, reuse what works, integrate where it counts and stay compliant without losing speed. In fact, this is a great time to turn things over to Yannick to show us what this looks like in action.

WATCH THE ENTIRE WEBINAR HERE:
Agile, Compliant, Competitive: Fast-Tracking Consumer Electronics Innovation

Ticking clock wearing graduation hat against blue background with the topic showing a tutorial video about categories for milestones.

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Categories for Milestones

Milestone Tracking Made Simple with Jama Connect’s Categories Feature

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 Jama Connect’s powerful features… in under five minutes.

In this Features in Five session, Patrick Knowles, Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software, demonstrates how Jama Connect’s Categories feature streamlines milestone tracking, boosts transparency, reduces risks, and ensures compliance.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Patrick Knowles:  Hello, I’m Patrick Knowles, Senior Solutions Consultant for Aerospace and Defense at Jama Software. In this video, I’ll demonstrate how teams can use Jama Connect’s Categories feature to improve visibility of deliverables at key development milestones throughout an airborne system’s product development cycle. This approach helps increase transparency, reduce risk, and ensure timely delivery of critical data.

When developing a complex system of systems such as an aircraft like an eVTOL, teams heavily rely on milestones. Tracking what is due at each milestone and certification stage can be a complex web of documents, schedules, and loose threads. Jama Connect’s Categories feature simplifies this by clearly organizing what’s due and when. This boosts transparency for engineering teams and reduces the risk of missed deadlines, as well as ensuring compliance with standards like ARP-4754 for systems such as an eVTOL.

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

Knowles: Solution. An organization administrator can set up milestone-specific Categories in Jama Connect. These Categories are assigned to the information due at each stage of a program, enabling teams to create filters, dashboards, and reviews for clear visibility. Unlike tags or other manual methods, Categories provide a structured error-resistant way to manage milestone data, reducing risks like copy-paste mistakes. Let’s open Jama Connect and learn how to enable this strategy in the tool.

The first step is to ensure Categories is enabled within the project. An organization administrator will enter the admin tab within their Jama Connect instance. From there, they will navigate to the category section of the tab and turn the toggle that enables Categories. After Categories is enabled, the administrator will begin to develop the specific Categories that will enable the team to track each milestone. The administrator will add a system development phase category by selecting add and populating the name. This will serve as the parent category, which the rest of the lifecycle milestones will be grouped underneath. From here, the administrator will add the rest of the milestones as individual Categories and move them under the system development phase parent.

It is a best practice in this case to use the move functionality rather than the copy functionality to keep the Categories trees simple and clean. Additionally, when complying with regulatory standards and requirements, it is best to clearly align your milestone. The milestones used throughout the rest of this example are derived from the ARP-4754B and its systems requirements process. This method can be expanded to any number of other regulatory docu ments as well. With all of the milestones created, the administrator has one last step to complete, assigning the parent system development phase category to the appropriate projects or enabling it to be globally accessible.

RELATED: Jama Connect for Air, Land, Sea, and Space Datasheet

Knowles: After your team’s organization administrator has completed the creation of the milestone Categories, it is time to implement within the project. First, a user will go into a project and begin to categorize components, sets, and folders that belong to each of the Categories. It is easiest to categorize top-down from components, sets, and folders, and then to batch manage Categories of each of the item types within the logical organizers. With the organizers categorized, the user can then manage the Categories of the individual items within each organizer.

Now that the hard work is done, it is time to harvest the fruits of the labor. The simplest way to do this is to open the Categories tab in the project and select any of the milestone Categories. With one click, the user will see all the items associated with that milestone. However, this isn’t the only way to visualize the information. A best practice for viewing Categories is to set up filters. By developing filters that narrow in on the information due at the upcoming milestone, a team can target that work and ensure it is effectively completed. Once a filter is created, the user can even utilize it to narrow down the project’s explorer by right-clicking on the filter and selecting apply filter to explorer. This will automatically sort the explorer to only display the information within the specific filter. Additionally, a team can use this filtering to help expedite exports or reports related to this narrowed down amount of information.

RELATED: Innovating Aviation with Jama Connect and Vertical Aerospace

Knowles: At Jama Software, we strive to ensure our customers are able to successfully implement and develop their products through the use of Jama Connect. Lifecycle milestones are no small feat, and the team here at Jama Software knows that. Creating a user-friendly and maintainable approach to developing and tracking data due at each lifecycle milestone is the driving force behind this Jama Connect features inside. By tracking data deliverables for lifecycle milestones in Jama Connect with Categories, a team will increase transparency, reduce the potential for error, and improve their data delivery process at Lifecycle Milestones. Through simple organization administration setup, a team can quickly align the work they are developing in Jama Connect to lifecycle milestones and improve their current processes. To find out more about tracking developmental milestones with Categories in Jama Connect, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com.

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Jama Connect Features in Five Video Series

How Jama Software Can Help Industrial Machinery Developers Stay Competitive in 2025

How Jama Software Can Help Industrial Machinery Developers Stay Competitive in 2025

Layoffs in the industrial machinery sector are rising across Europe, reflecting growing pressures in an industry that is becoming increasingly complex. For machinery development engineers, systems engineers, and product managers, finding ways to streamline processes, ensure compliance, and get products to market faster is more important than ever. Enter Jama Software.

Jama Connect® is a powerful tool tailored to help machinery developers tackle challenges, reduce costs, and gain a competitive edge. By providing robust solutions for requirements management, risk mitigation, and team collaboration, Jama Software offers a way forward amid rising industry complexities.

This blog will explore the evolving industrial machinery landscape in 2025, highlight the challenges driving the need for efficiency, and show how Jama Software can help companies save money while maintaining their competitive advantage.

The Industrial Machinery Landscape in 2025

The industrial machinery sector is on the brink of transformation as we approach 2025. Innovation is surging, but so are challenges. Here are the key factors shaping the current landscape:

1. Increasing Complexity of Machinery Development

Today’s machinery is more advanced than ever. With the rise of automation, IoT, and advanced robotics, machines require intricate systems integrating hardware and software. This complexity demands precise requirements management and traceability to avoid costly missteps.

2. Growing Regulatory Demands

Industrial machinery must comply with stringent safety and regulatory standards, such as IEC 61508. Meeting these requirements adds layers of complexity, often requiring significant time and resources to ensure full compliance.

3. Cost Pressures and Market Competition

Global competition is intensifying, pushing businesses to innovate faster while keeping costs low. Additionally, labor shortages and economic instability in key regions, including Europe, are forcing companies to optimize their operations to maintain profitability.

4. Focus on Sustainable Development

Sustainability and energy efficiency are no longer optional but essential. Product developers must design machines that meet green standards while maintaining performance and reliability, which adds another layer of complexity.

Navigating these challenges requires a new approach to machinery development. That’s where Jama Software steps in.

RELATED: The Top Challenges in Industrial Manufacturing and Consumer Electronic Development

How Jama Software Helps Save Money in Machinery Development

Jama Software is designed to meet the unique needs of industrial machinery developers. From cutting costs to boosting productivity, Jama Connect offers solutions that address some of the most pressing challenges in machinery development.

1. Efficient Requirements Management

With Jama Connect, machinery developers can manage complex requirements effectively. Here’s how it helps cut costs:

  • Clearer Specifications: Reduce rework by ensuring all stakeholders understand and agree on requirements from the start.
  • Live Traceability™: Track changes and link high-level requirements to detailed specifications, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
  • Faster Reviews and Approvals: Jama Connect’s collaborative review process significantly shortens approval times, reducing delays in development.

For example, FORT Robotics, an industrial robotics company, used Jama Connect to reduce their requirements approval process from weeks to just minutes, creating significant time and cost savings.

2. Enhanced Collaboration Across Teams

Siloed communication often leads to misaligned goals, increased errors, and wasted time. Jama Connect eliminates these inefficiencies by offering:

  • Real-Time Collaboration: Teams can work together across functions, share feedback, and resolve issues seamlessly in one platform.
  • Cross-Functional Visibility: Gain a comprehensive view of the development process, helping teams identify potential risks early.

This level of collaboration reduces miscommunication and minimizes resource wastage, which is especially important in cost-sensitive industries like machinery development.

3. Compliance Made Easy

Meeting compliance standards like IEC 61508 is both time-consuming and costly. Jama Software simplifies compliance by:

  • Providing Best Practice Frameworks: Teams can use pre-configured templates and guidelines tailored for safety-critical systems.
  • Ensuring End-to-End Traceability: From initial requirements to testing and maintenance, Jama Connect ensures that all steps comply with industry standards.

By streamlining compliance processes, Jama Connect helps reduce the risk of costly recalls or regulatory penalties.

4. Risk Mitigation

Every development project carries inherent risks, especially in complex machinery systems. Jama Software minimizes risks through:

  • Proactive Risk Identification: Built-in risk management features help teams identify potential issues early before they escalate.
  • Continuous Monitoring: Track risks throughout the development lifecycle, ensuring they remain under control.

Minimizing development risks saves both time and money, preventing costly setbacks that can derail a project.

5. Accelerating Time to Market

The faster you can get your product to market, the more competitive your business will be. Jama Connect speeds up product development with:

  • Streamlined Processes: Automated workflows and traceability reduce time spent on manual tasks.
  • Reuse of Requirements: Save time by reusing validated requirements for similar projects, eliminating redundancy.

Hannah Potter, Systems Engineer at IonQ, shared, “The review function has been a lifesaver… We can use our requirements and test plans for the basis of future designs, targeting our goal of continuing to build better and faster machines.”

6. Cost-Effective Scaling

For companies experiencing growth, scalability is a major concern. Jama Software is designed to scale with your business needs without requiring expensive customizations or additional tools. Its robust platform supports even the most complex systems with ease.

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

Why Now Is the Time to Adopt Jama Software

The industrial machinery sector is at a critical juncture. Developers who adapt to the current complexities will thrive, while those who cling to outdated processes risk falling behind. Jama Software provides the tools needed to stay ahead in this fast-changing market.

Here’s why you should consider Jama Software now:

  • Save money by eliminating inefficiencies and reducing rework.
  • Meet regulatory standards faster and with confidence.
  • Collaborate more effectively across teams and locations.
  • Mitigate risks to ensure smoother development cycles.
  • Stay competitive by launching high-quality machines faster.

Take the Next Step Toward Cost-Effective Machinery Development

Whether you’re dealing with mounting cost pressures, compliance challenges, or complex system requirements, Jama Software is the solution you’ve been searching for. With tools built specifically for industrial machinery developers, Jama Connect empowers your team to cut costs, save time, and maintain consistency in delivering innovative products.

Start your cost-effective development journey today. Book a Demo or Get Started with Jama Connect.

Choosing the Best Tool for Requirements Management in the Automotive Industry (Even If Your Suppliers Use Something Else)

Choosing the Best Tool for Requirements Management in the Automotive Industry (Even If Your Suppliers Use Something Else)

Requirements management plays a vital role in the product development lifecycle, impacting everyone in the automotive industry—from project managers and architects to software teams, systems engineers, and senior executives. Whether you’re overseeing the development of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) or managing the assembly of an entire vehicle platform, having a robust requirements management tool that helps support engineering governance can mean the difference between success and costly delays.

But here’s where it can get tricky. Your organization isn’t developing products in a vacuum. You’re constantly collaborating with a network of suppliers, each of whom may have their own preferred requirement management tools. The question then becomes, should you compromise your needs and processes to align with the tools your suppliers are using, or can you select the BEST tool for your needs and ensure seamless collaboration anyway?

Spoiler alert: The answer lies in selecting the right tool for your organization, regardless of what your suppliers are using. Here’s how you can make that decision with confidence.

Why Picking the Wrong Tool Could Cost You

Many automotive companies end up selecting requirements management tools solely because their suppliers use them. While this might seem like the easiest path to collaboration, it can actually result in more inefficiencies and frustrations down the road.

Key Challenges of Adopting the Wrong Tool:

  • Misalignment with Your Processes: Tools that don’t support your specific workflows or business goals can disrupt productivity.
  • Steep Learning Curves: Adopting a tool simply because others are using it can lead to excessive training needs. If the interface isn’t user-friendly or intuitive for your team, adoption rates may plummet.
  • Limited Scalability: What works for your supplier today may not meet your complex or evolving needs tomorrow.
  • Missed Opportunities: A mediocre tool can restrict innovation and time to market. When you’re stuck trying to make something work, you’re not maximizing efficiency or leveraging the full power of your processes.

The takeaway? It’s your team working day in and day out with the requirements management tool — not your suppliers. That means your organization’s specific needs should come first.

RELATED: Engineering Governance: The Engine Behind Automotive Excellence

Must-Have Features in a Requirements Management Tool

Choosing the right software isn’t just about checking boxes. It’s about finding a tool that fits seamlessly into your automotive development environment and supports collaboration across your supplier network.

Here are some must-have features to look for:

1: Advanced Traceability

Traceability is vital in the automotive industry for safety-critical systems and regulatory compliance. The right tool should allow you to trace requirements across your entire system—from initial stakeholder needs to risks and mitigations to testing and validation. A tool that allows you to span the entire V-Model with high visibility and ease of tracking gaps and potential risks is key. Dashboard views and other means to obtain a holistic view of the progress of your project are essential for senior management to maintain a pulse on the project and ensure progress is being made with minimal risk.

2: Change Management and Version Control

Selecting a tool that allows for change to be controlled and easily reacted to is essential for a requirements management software. Suspect triggers allow downstream impacts to be easily identified and remedied. Proactive strategies and features like impact analysis, allow for change to be assed prior to making changes, allowing teams to prepare for the impact before it happens.

RELATED: Suspicious Requirements: The Importance of Suspect Tracking in Requirements Management

3: Regulatory Support

Ensure you look for a tool that is well-versed in your industry and understands the intimate details of the business challenges you face. Ideally, the tool you select will have frameworks and datasets that adhere to your regulatory and safety compliance standards. Standards and regulations, including ISO 21434:2021, ISO 26262:2018, and ASPICE, are essential, and the tool you select should help facilitate your compliance with these standards.

4: Cross-Tool Interoperability

One of the biggest concerns when choosing a tool that your suppliers may or may not be using is interoperability. Look for software that supports standards like ReqIF (Requirements Interchange Format) to facilitate seamless exchange of requirements with external stakeholders across your entire ecosystem. This ensures you can collaborate effectively without sacrificing your own processes.

5: AI and Automation Capabilities

Modern requirements management tools leverage AI to speed up processes and improve quality. Automation capabilities can also eliminate repetitive tasks, freeing up your team to focus on higher-value work. Automatic test case generation, glossary definition, risk detection, IP identification are now considered key to requirements management and will be the standard moving forward.

6: Administration, Scalability, and Security (SOC2 Compliance)

Your requirements management solution should grow with your organization. Whether you’re managing one project or dozens, the tool should adapt to increased complexity and size. Performance at scale should be a key consideration. You’ll always need a tool that is easy to administer. You should not need a specialized role to perform this task. Cloud hosting options provide flexibility and lowers cost of ownership. SOC2 hosting environments along with a product that is also SOC2 certified is essential when considering today’s ever-evolving security risks.

7: Configurable Workflows, Customized Reports, and Export Templates

Every team operates differently. A versatile tool will allow you to configure workflows, reports, and export templates so it fits with how you work, rather than forcing you to change your processes.

8: Supply Chain Collaboration Features

While you shouldn’t need the exact same tool as your suppliers, features like shared requirements repositories, real-time commenting, and simplified export/import options make it easier to stay on the same page — even if you’re working on different platforms. Having a tool that allows you to invite external stakeholders into your reviews (at no cost) is a major benefit and consideration.

The Case for Putting Your Needs First

Imagine you’re working on a next-gen electric vehicle platform. While your suppliers might be focused on delivering specific components (like an ECU or software component), you’re responsible for the big picture. A tool that fails to give you high-level visibility simply because it aligns with your supplier’s processes? That’s a no-go.

When you select a tool based on your needs, you gain the following advantages:

  • Streamlined Internal Processes: You can focus on efficiency and alignment within your team without constantly adapting to external tools.
  • Improved Quality Management: With better traceability and error reduction mechanisms, your team is better positioned to meet high-quality standards.
  • Flexibility to Work with Any Supplier: The right tool ensures you can collaborate effectively with any supplier, regardless of what they’re using.

Making Collaboration Work Across Different Tools

If your suppliers aren’t using the same tool, how do you handle the exchange of requirements? The good news is that most modern requirements management tools include features that make cross-platform collaboration easier than you might think.

Here’s How You Can Ensure Smooth Collaboration Regardless of Tools:

  • Leverage ReqIF Standards: ReqIF facilitates reliable requirements exchange across your entire ecosystem. By adopting a tool with strong ReqIF support, you ensure compatibility with your suppliers, no matter what software they prefer.
  • Utilize Integrations and APIs: Many requirements management platforms offer direct integrations to popular tools such as Jira, Teamcenter, LDRA, Simulink, and other best of breed tools. APIs or third-party integration tools can help bridge the gap between systems, creating a smoother flow of information.
  • Define Common Terminology and Traceability Information Models: Consistent and clear data standards and traceability models reduce friction when exchanging files or tracing requirements. Establish these standards early in the collaboration process to ensure seamless communication across all stakeholders.
  • Invest in Training and Consulting Services: While the right tool should be intuitive, training ensures your team gains expertise in leveraging advanced features for cross-platform requirements exchange. Look for companies that will partner with you from the start with industry expert consultants and can consult with your on your journey to success. Avoid those that outsource or charge high consulting fees after you’ve started your project, which will result in cost and delays.

RELATED: The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect® Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability

Final Thoughts

Choosing the best requirements management tool for your automotive projects is no small task. But if you prioritize your organization’s unique needs while leveraging cross-platform compatibility features, you can have the best of both worlds.

Your requirements tool should empower your team, streamline your processes, and enhance collaboration without forcing you to compromise. Don’t settle for “good enough” just to align with supply chain tools when you can choose what’s “best for us”—and still work seamlessly with partners.

Curious about which tool could be the best fit for your needs? Start exploring modern requirements management tool like Jama Connect so you can stay ahead in this era of increasing complexity in the automotive industry.

 

The subject-matter expert host of this webinar, Matt Mickle, pictured alongside the title of this blog, best practices for variant management.

In this blog, we recap our recent webinar, “Best Practices for Simplifying Variant Management.”

[Webinar Recap] Best Practices for Simplifying Variant Management

Effective variant management is essential for organizations navigating diverse and competitive markets, regulatory requirements, and evolving customer needs. By adopting best practices, teams can efficiently tailor requirements while maintaining alignment and traceability across complex product lines.

Jama Connect® offers flexible strategies to simplify the creation, adaptation, and tracking of multiple variants. These approaches facilitate efficient reuse, reduce complexity, and maintain traceability across complicated product lines.

In this insightful session, requirements management expert Matt Mickle, Director of Solutions & Consulting at Jama Software, will lead attendees through common variant management use cases and proven strategies.

Key takeaways include:

  • Identify and adapt variants to meet shifting market, regulatory, and customer demands.
  • Streamline variant creation through smart reuse and cross-team alignment.
  • Use structured feature models to manage options and complexity.
  • Ensure compliance while evolving product variants.
  • Optimize product line strategy with better visibility into variation.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Matt Mickle: Welcome, everyone. We have a fun topic today, walking through variant management use cases with the goal of simplifying this sometimes complicated topic. I will start off by walking through some of the common use cases that we often hear, followed by some concrete examples of how we would see these within the industry. I’ll talk a little bit about how we’ll solve these within Jama Connect and then have some demonstration of this directly in the tool. I’ll do this for each use case as we proceed, and then we’ll move on to some Q&A and I’ll answer some of your questions.

So, what do I mean when I say variant management? Well, simply, I would describe variant management as any process or technique that is used to manage variability and assets within a project. This could be in the form of certain techniques, such as feature-based product line engineering, which we’ll talk a little bit more about later. Configuration management, product derivation or branch and merge. A product can vary in many ways, such as different features, material or components, premium services or levels of performance. Here are some examples you might recognize. Models of home appliances with different sizes or capabilities, like these refrigerators. Microcontrollers with a configuration of reusable IP blocks. Medical devices, such as insulin pumps or digital thermometers having an array of features based on setting, method of application or type of consumer. As well as everyday devices, such as smartphones or smartwatches with different uses or consumer profiles.

Nearly every product you could think of has some amount of variation. And the process of managing those variants extends from the conception of the products, all the way into their description at the point of sale, and maintenance thereafter. So, one of these methods, which we will mention in the discussion today, is product line engineering or PLE for short. And for this, we’ll use the simple definition, a focus on engineering for a family of products with similar features, components or modules as a single product line to leverage commonality and variability, minimize the duplication of effort and maximize reusability.

Now, a couple of definitions that go along with that from the standards for product line engineering, from ISO 26550, the definition of a feature would be an abstract functional characteristic of a system of interest that end users and other stakeholders can understand. And from the product line engineering for feature-based product line engineering standard, ISO 26580, a product line would be a family of similar products with variations in features. So, product line engineering could be considered as the next step in maturity. Single system engineering. And as the ISO standard on software and system engineering for product line engineering and management states, product companies utilizing single system engineering and management approaches may end up with highly complex and low quality products. Low productivity, high employee turnover, and less than expected customer satisfaction.

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

Mickle: So, let’s instead talk about the benefits of moving from single system engineering into product line engineering. Product line engineering enables organizations to create product line architecture that allows for the systematic reuse of components, modules, and assets across different products within a product line. This promotes efficiency by reducing redundancy in the need to recreate similar functionalities for each product. By reusing existing components and assets, organizations can significantly reduce development costs. Product line engineering allows for economies of scale, as the investment in creating a core set of assets can be spread across multiple products, leading to cost savings in the long run.

With product line engineering, organizations can streamline the development process by leveraging existing components and architectures. Faster time to market for new products, since development efforts are focused on creating unique features, rather than rebuilding common functionalities. Product line engineering helps ensure consistency in products across the product line. By reusing well-tested and validated components, the likelihood of introducing defects or inconsistencies is reduced. And this will lead to higher overall product quality. As market demands change or new technologies emerge, product line engineering provides a framework that allows organizations to adapt and evolve their product line more easily. This enables the addition of new features or modification of existing ones without starting the development from scratch.

Product line engineering supports efficient configuration management, allowing organizations to define and manage variations and products through configuration, rather than by creating separated versions or desynchronized copies of content. This simplifies the task of handling different customer requirements or market-specific adaptations. Product line engineering makes maintenance and upgrades more manageable. Changes or bug fixes can be applied to common components, and then the updates can be propagated to all of the products within the line, ensuring that each product benefits from the improvements without having to undergo individual modifications.

And finally, product line engineering helps mitigate the risks associated with product development by relying on well-established and proven components. Since these components have been used and tested across multiple products, the likelihood of critical issues arising is reduced. Now, of course, there are many benefits for product line engineering, but there are a lot of challenges that a company goes through in order to try and move towards product line engineering. For example, let’s say a company starts out with a single product and then begins to build variants on that product, turning it into a product line. As the number of variants and variation between them grows, the ability to manage them becomes more and more challenging.

When a change is made, it’s important to assess not only the impact of that change within the product, where the change is made, but also in any products that are part of the same product line. If the change is against common requirements, then the decision is needed on whether they need variation. New versions or configurations of components of a system will need to be thoroughly reviewed with regards to how they interconnect. This becomes even more challenging and complex when considered as the product development data moves from one development application to the next. Throughout the supply chain, information about progress and change needs to flow and be collected in order to see overall status.

It’s very difficult to collect and understand this with only a single complex product and increases exponentially with variation. Now, within the context of the content included in Jama, the task of managing variants begins once there is any notion of more than one product being developed which has common requirements to another product. The question then arises of how to maximize reusability, and still understand the impact across multiple variants in the most efficient and effective way. Let’s go over a few ways that this presents itself and what the desired outcomes are. The first case is related to high-level requirements. And in this case, I’ll call it, the use case custom requirements.

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

Mickle: Those high-level requirements need to change for a given project. These input requirements could be things like specific market support for different markets that your product is in. It could also be different regulations for different regions, where your product is located and they have to go by different standards. Could also be that your customers are requesting your core product, but they want some customization to that core product. It could also be that you have different consumer profiles that you’re trying to match that product with, or it could be just an evolution from a previous year’s model that’s still in production.

In these circumstances, we may want to just be able to understand what the high-level requirements have as an impact on derived requirements design and test. So, we may need to filter out and keep track of what content stems from these input requirements. And we may need to test and produce documentation specifically related to that filter content. So, let’s imagine that our product team has been working through the lifecycle of creating an initial version of a product, and has developed many of the requirements and design, as well as written the tests against those requirements.

Now they have just received word that there is a new customer that has invested the product and would like the same product the team is already developing, but with some customizations and their own custom branding. This customer would like to also introduce the product into a new market which has a different power and connectivity standard. Technically, the scope of the change is going to total about 10% of the overall content, but the needs need to be tested independently and the documentation needs to be specific to each variant. So, you could copy the content and make the changes in each product independently, but perhaps you would still prefer to just indicate the differences and otherwise make use of the content that currently exists.

Also, you might still be able to make use of much of the testing that is in place for anything that is not interfaced with the components that have changes. For this reason, our strategy would be to keep those products together in a single super-set project, and use a mechanism within Jama called categories to indicate the variation. As you can see from the diagram here, we have the category tree which references a product line with different variants. Those variants would then be applied to the top-level requirements within your project, and then derived appropriately throughout the traceability within that project to ensure that everything has a category for the variant in which it lives.

For those items that are common to multiple variants, those would also contain the category for each variant in which they apply. Let’s go ahead and take a look at how that looks within Jama. So, for this example, I’m going to use a project which we call 48 volt power assist here. And this is our product. And basically, within here we’re going to look at the different variants that this 48 volt power assist has. So, first of all, I can go over to this categories tab, and I can click on that and see the different variants associated with the different categories. These have been added within the organization admin section.

And within each of those categories, you’ll see that I have requirements associated with the category. I just have to see those by clicking on the category itself and then I’ll see throughout the tree what categories apply to which requirements, or vice versa, which requirements apply to those categories in this case. I can also create a filter based on anything that applies to that category. So, here I’ve got those same items, but now I’ve got the structure associated with it when I look at the reading view associated with this. That gives me the ability to, of course, do things like export it as a document and include those different heading structures.

WATCH THE ENTIRE WEBINAR HERE:
Eliminate Gaps and Risks with Proven Traceability Best Practices

Graduation cap on top of ticking clock to show this topic is about learning the Change Management capabilities in Jama Connect in 5 minutes.

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Change Management

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 Jama Connect’s powerful features… in under five minutes.

In this Features in Five session, Máté Hársing, Solutions Architect at Jama Software, explores the Change Management capabilities in Jama Connect, showing how regulated industries can streamline their compliance and efficiency across the product lifecycle.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Máté Hársing: Hi, I’m Máté Hársing, Solutions Architect at Jama Software. Welcome to this Features in Five video on Change Management with Jama Connect. If you’ve ever worked in a regulated industry like MedTech, you know that change is inevitable, whether it’s from updated standards, customer feedback or internal improvements, where every change must be documented, assessed, and validated, because in our industry, changes can literally be life-critical. Without the right tools, managing change quickly turns into a mess, email threads, disconnected spreadsheets, and siloed tools. That leads to missed impacts, compliance risks, and wasted time.

Jama Connect helps bring order to that chaos with structured change management, and it doesn’t stop at development. After a product is approved, field feedback, manufacturing updates, or regulatory changes also need to be reviewed and connected to related items. Without a system in place, tracking those changes through email or spreadsheets risks letting things slip through the cracks.

So what goes wrong without Jama Connect? Teams can’t easily see what’s impacted by a change. Requirements, test cases, and risks live in separate tools. Manual versioning makes it hard to track who changed what and why. Unverified changes can lead to audit issues or delays. Here is how Jama Connect helps. During development, Live Traceability™, Versioning, and the Suspect Link tool help teams stay aligned and act fast. Impact Analysis and Version comparison give clarity before making a change. For released products, formal change requests pull in all affected items, and reviews in the review center bring visibility, collaboration, and confident decision-making.

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

Hársing: Here is a Trace View of our device’s system requirements. You can see everything it touches, subsystem requirement verifications, and associated risks. Now, we will simulate a change to this system requirement. Once the change is made, the suspect tool automatically flags impacted items downstream, letting us know that in this case, this particular version of the verification case no longer covers the updated requirement and has to be updated. This is what we call reactive change management. Switching to Impact Analysis, we can preview all linked items before implementing the change so our engineering and quality teams can assess the ripple effect and plan accordingly. This is known as proactive change management. It helps us assess the complete cost of a change across as many degrees of separation as our item’s traceability has, as well as providing filters to focus on specific domains, such as verifications in this case, drowning out the noise of any other items we don’t want to see for the time being.

Next, we will use the compare versions view to see what changed. Clearly marked, easy to digest, with intuitive red line/green line differentiation. This is especially helpful during design reviews or when responding to auditors. You’ll notice there is a comprehensive audit trail captured here, who changed what, when and why, so that we can create complete accountability in Jama Connect. And here’s how we handle the change to an approved product. We create a change request item, pull in related artifacts using an easily predefined filter, and send everything through a review. All stakeholders can review the changes in context, see the differences, and provide feedback, ensuring the change is well-documented and fully assessed. The change request can be finalized while we see all the related items and can make sure all the necessary changes in the scope of the change request have been implemented.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution for Medical Device & Life Sciences

Hársing: Jama Connect supports seamless change management across the full product lifecycle, from controlled updates during development to formal change requests for approved products, ensuring traceability, visibility, and compliance every step of the way. Thank you for watching this demonstration of change management in Jama Connect. If you would like to learn more about how Jama Connect can optimize your product development processes, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com.

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

Community Event Week 2025: Exclusive Roundtables for Jama Connect® Users

Community Event Week 2025: Exclusive Roundtables for Jama Connect® Users

At Jama Software, we know the power of community. That’s why we’re thrilled to invite you to our Community Event Week, happening from May 12 to May 16! This exclusive event is just for our valued Jama Connect users, offering attendee-led sessions packed with insights, opportunities to grow, and meaningful connections with other professionals in your industry.

Each day focuses on a specific vertical, ensuring that the topics, challenges, and triumphs discussed are truly relevant to you. Whether you’re tackling compliance hurdles, managing intricate development cycles, or looking to exchange ideas with peers, our Community Event Week is your chance to level up your expertise and meet like-minded professionals.

Why Attend Community Event Week?

This isn’t your typical webinar or conference. Community Event Week is all about fostering connections, sharing real-world solutions, and growing together. Here’s what you can expect:

  • Relevant Sessions: Each day is tailored to a specific industry vertical, so the topics resonate with your professional challenges and goals.
  • Expert Guidance: Gain insights from Jama Software solutions leads who’ll moderate discussions and help answer your burning questions.
  • Peer Connection: Build relationships with other professionals in your field who use Jama Connect.
  • Practical Takeaways: Leave your session armed with actionable insights and strategies to tackle your day-to-day challenges.
Community Connect Schedule

May 12 – Community Connect for Automotive & Semiconductor

Kick off the week with professionals from the automotive and semiconductor industries. This session is all about addressing the intricacies of these fast-evolving fields. Share your experiences, discuss challenges, and get answers to your questions, all while gaining expert insights from fellow attendees and our Jama Software Solutions Lead.

  • Who it’s for: Automotive and semiconductor professionals
  • Why attend: Network with peers, talk about the complexities of the industry, and exchange real-world solutions

Learn More and Register HERE 

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

May 13 – Community Connect for Medical Devices & Life Sciences

Dive into the complex world of medical devices and life sciences. Whether you’re managing compliance challenges, curious about effective regulatory strategies, or simply looking for innovative perspectives, this session offers something for everyone.

  • Who it’s for: Medical device industry professionals
  • Why attend: Take part in attendee-led discussions with peers, exploring strategies to deliver safe, effective products in a fast-paced and evolving market.

Learn More and Register HERE 

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

May 14 – Community Connect for Oil, Gas, Architecture, Engineering, and Software

Join a diverse group of professionals from industries like oil, gas, engineering, construction, and software. This open discussion will tackle both common and industry-specific challenges, sparking ideas and solutions to help you move forward.

  • Who it’s for: Professionals in software, oil & gas, engineering, and construction
  • Why attend: Tap into collective expertise across these important and complex industries

Learn More and Register HERE 

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

May 15 – Community Connect for Aerospace & Defense

Aerospace and defense teams know the stakes are high. From managing complex requirements to complying with strict regulations and timelines, this industry requires precision. This session offers a space for collaboration and innovative problem-solving with fellow experts.

  • Who it’s for: Aerospace and defense professionals
  • Why attend: Swap ideas and discover new strategies for mission-critical projects

Learn More and Register HERE 

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

May 16 – Community Connect for Industrial, Consumer Electronics, & Energy

Wrap up the week with an opportunity for cross-industry connection. Professionals in industrial, energy, and consumer electronics will share their experiences, lessons learned, and fresh ideas. Expand your network while learning from peers in diverse yet complementary fields.

  • Who it’s for: Industrial, electronics, and energy professionals
  • Why attend: Engage in attendee-led sessions that foster peer collaboration on creating reliable, high-quality products while navigating the complexities of a dynamic marketplace.

Learn More and Register HERE 

RELATED: Functional Safety in Industrial Manufacturing: Navigating IEC 61508, ISO 13849, IEC 10218 for Safer, Smarter Operations

Exclusive to Jama Connect Users

These roundtables are designed for current Jama Connect customers to provide the most relevant and enriching experience possible. If you’re a current user, you’re in for some invaluable sessions that could transform the way you work.

However, if you’re not yet a Jama Software client, but are exploring how we can help your organization streamline complex development, we’ve got plenty of resources to get you started:

And if you’d like to speak directly with our team about your specific challenges, we’d love to set up a personalized consultation. Contact us here.