In addition to the honor of being named the standout leader in requirements management software (for both Mid-Market and Enterprise), we are proud to showcase that we were awarded the Users Most Likely to Recommend badge as well as several additional medals for Spring 2023, including:
Users Most Likely to Recommend: Earned the highest rating among other solutions in this category.
Users Love Us: For products that have collected 20 reviews with an average rating of 4.0 stars.
Fastest Implementation: For products that had the shortest go-live time in its category.
Easiest Setup: The product that earned the highest Ease of Setup rating in its category.
Easiest to Use: The product in the Usability Index earned the highest Ease of Admin rating in its category.
Easiest Admin: For products that earn the highest Ease of Admin rating in their category.
Momentum Leader: Products in the Leader tier in the Momentum Grid® rank in the top 25% of their category’s products by their users.
Enterprise Leader: For products rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
Download the full report to see why customers love using Jama Connect for product, systems, and software development.
Learn More About the Spring 2023 G2 Grid for the top Requirements Management Software productsHERE!
We live vicariously through the successes of our customers. The “Users Love Us” category, in particular, is a testament to our commitment to our customers.
At Jama Software®, we’re proud to be recognized as the leader in requirements management software. We’re grateful to our customers for their invaluable feedback on their experiences using Jama Connect for requirements management. We remain committed to providing them with the expert knowledge, attention, and resources they need to help them achieve their goals.
“Powerful tool that makes traceability easy. I’ve found Jama Connect to be a great platform for managing my project requirements. It has a simple user interface but also allows for a lot of customization for my own company’s needs. I work in the medical device industry and find this software essential for tracking our internal requirements as well as external regulatory requirements.”
-From review collected and hosted on G2.com, Andrew P, Lead Product Engineer – Systems and Usability – Small Business
We strive to provide our customers with the best level of service possible, and we look forward to supporting them with our expertise.
“I’ve been satisfied with Jama for years. Everything just works. The administrative tools are flexible and allow configuration to match our team’s workflow. It has highly configurable reports to allow us to export data for use in our document control system..”
-From review collected and hosted on G2.com, Allan P., Principal Test Engineer – Enterprise
From all of us at Jama Software to all of you, thank you!
G2 scores products and sellers based on reviews, gathered from their user community, as well as data aggregated from online sources and social networks. Together, these scores are mapped on their proprietary G2 Grid®, which can be used to compare products, streamline the buying process, and quickly identify the best products based on the experiences of your peers.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/04/2023-05-02_g2-leader-spring-2023_1024x512-1.jpg5121024Jama Software/media/jama-logo-primary.svgJama Software2023-05-02 03:00:572024-01-18 00:24:19G2 Again Names Jama Connect® the Standout Leader in Requirements Management Software in their Spring 2023 Grid® Report
Jama Connect® Features in Five: Using Jama Connect with a Quality Management System (QMS) for Medical Device & Life Sciences
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 video, Steven Pink, Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software®, will provide insight into how Jama Connect is commonly used in the context of a medical device Quality Management System (QMS.)
In this video, we will:
Provide insight on how Jama Connect is commonly used in the context of a medical device quality management system
Demonstrate key features that provide value to those responsible for quality and regulatory matters
Offer clear guidance on how Jama Connect – a requirements management solution – supplements a separate quality management system within a cohesive ecosystem of complimentary applications
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Steven Pink: Welcome to this segment of Features in Five. I’m Steven Pink, a senior solutions architect at Jama Software and today I’ll be giving an overview to help provide some insight into how Jama Connect is commonly used in the context of a medical device quality management system.
We’ll demonstrate some of the key features that provide value to those responsible for quality and regulatory matters and clear guidance on how Jama Connect, a requirements management solution supplements a separate quality management system within a cohesive ecosystem of complimentary applications.
We often work with medical device or life science companies that have some form of quality management system whether that be paper-based or an eQMS and they’re working to introduce a requirements management solution like Jama Connect for the first time.
For individuals with a quality and regulatory background that have not yet worked in an environment using a formal requirements management solution, this can seem like a foreign and potentially disruptive change to a well-defined process.
Pink: So before we provide some insight to help address that common concern, we want to provide some context as to why an organization would want to introduce Jama Connect in the first place. Prior to using a formal requirements management solution, engineering and R&D are often left managing requirements related data during development in documents, spreadsheets and tools like Jira, Confluence, or SharePoint that are not designed to support complex requirements management.
In this type of scenario, engineering often finds it difficult to manage and maintain complex traceability as they work. So they often leave it to be completed at the end of a phase or milestone as opposed to maintained in real time. This often leads to gaps or errors being identified late in development which is significantly more costly to address the later they’re identified. In addition to having difficulty maintaining traceability, engineering often struggles to manage change to requirements and understand the full impact of each change.
They’ll find it hard to keep data in sync between requirements stored in documents or spreadsheets and other tools like Jira or Azure DevOps where data resides in silos. They’ll often waste a lot of time or effort compiling documentation for their design history file at the end of a given phase before these artifacts can be signed off and stored as an auditable record in a document control system. As products increase in complexity and regulatory guidelines continue to increase in rigor, these challenges grow exponentially for engineering.
To help address these challenges, Jama Connect provides engineering and product teams with a working environment to manage requirements, risks, tests and the traceability between these items in real time. We call this managing live traceability.
Pink: From a quality and regulatory perspective, Jama Connect’s relationship rule diagram provides a governing structure to ensure that requirement traceability is maintained following proper design controls and quality procedures. This structure makes it simple to manage change, perform impact analysis, and ensure traceability coverage throughout development.
The first thing we see when working on a project in Jama Connect is the dashboard with traceability rules. This makes it easy to understand the expectations for traceability and identify exceptions through dashboard widgets, such as gaps in test coverage or finding unmitigated risks.
With data living and Jama Connect, managing documentation and traceability becomes easier. Once documentation has been authored, it can be sent for a formalized review. Cross-functional teams can utilize the review center to conduct iterative reviews and significantly increase the quality and efficiency of the feedback being given.
Once all items for a given release have been reviewed and approved, these items can automatically transition into an accepted and blocked state, ensuring that changes are not made to approved items unintentionally. When the time comes to generate auditable documentation, Jama Connect allows teams to automatically or manually capture baselines and export these baseline documents out of the system to be signed off in a separate document control system as an auditable record. This process reduces the time spent manually reworking documents as part of the QMS process. And these document export templates can easily be customized to match existing internal quality standards and ensure consistency in the way requirements and other details are documented.
In the end, Jama Connect can help engineering team more easily manage their work and simplify the process of maintaining traceability. As a byproduct of their efforts, quality, and regulatory teams are provided with higher-quality auditable documents without making changes to their existing quality management systems.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/04/FIF-QMS-4.jpg10801920Steven Pink/media/jama-logo-primary.svgSteven Pink2023-04-14 03:00:232024-01-18 00:30:54Jama Connect® Features in Five: Using Jama Connect with a Quality Management System (QMS) for Medical Device & Life Sciences
Revolutionize Your Software Development Process with Seamless Integration of Jama Connect and Atlassian Jira
Nearly all of Jama Software®’s clients engage in software development to some degree. In some cases, the products they build are entirely software-based, and in others, software is just one critical component of a more complex system.
Because most software engineering teams use Atlassian Jira as their central development hub, Jama Software provides a direct link between Jama Connect® and Jira through our integration platform, Jama Connect Interchange™.
As the Product Manager for Jama Connect Interchange (JCI), I often get asked by customers for best practices and examples of how to integrate Jama Connect with Jira, so their teams can collaborate across these tools more seamlessly.
For the most part, the customers I talk to aren’t interested in discussing high-level theories and best practices for software development (though our seasoned consulting team is always happy to provide advice in this area!). Rather, customers are looking for ground floor examples and use cases to reconnect their disconnected teams and processes.
Our customers know that in order to finish projects on time and on budget, the two most important tools in their software development ecosystem – Jama Connect and Jira – need to talk to each other directly. That’s where a targeted integration workstream comes in.
Jama Connect-Jira Integration Examples
Today, I’m going to share a few of the most successful Jama Connect to Jira integration examples we’ve seen. These examples can be implemented on their own or layered together for a more advanced workstream.
Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list! If your team has another workstream they’re loving, I’d encourage you to post about it in the JCI Sub-Community for others to see.
Editor’s Note: The terminology included below may vary slightly depending on your industry.
Example #1 (Agile Development Workstream) – Requirements in Jama Connect, Stories and Tasks in Jira
Most of our customers have the best success by completing their higher-level product planning in Jama Connect, while reserving Jira for more granular task execution by the software engineering team.
This is because Jira excels at task management, while Jama Connect’s built-in requirements traceability, risk management, and test management capabilities make it the ideal place to track your project in a holistic manner.
With the following model, you send software requirements from Jama Connect to Jira for execution at distinct points in the project’s lifecycle when software development activity occurs.
Rather than sync full hierarchies of items (requirements, user stories, tasks, etc.) back and forth unnecessarily, we set up JCI to sync just the relevant information at the time it is needed by the receiving team. This provides greater focus and prevents duplication of effort or conflicting changes.
Example #2 (Project Management Workstream) – Requirements and Stories in Jama Connect, Tasks in Jira
This example is similar to the first, except that User Stories are authored in Jama Connect rather than in Jira. Use this workstream if the Project Manager or Product Manager typically breaks down requirements into more granular units of work (stories) during the planning phase, before passing them off to the development team for execution.
With this workstream, each team works in their tool of choice, and when information is shared by multiple teams, that information is visible from both tools and synced in real time.
Example # 3 – Never Miss a Regression Defect
The regression testing cycle that accompanies each new software release can be chaotic if you don’t have an airtight process in place. During regression, Jama Software’s own development teams use JCI to streamline communication between our QA testers (who work in Jama Connect) and software engineers (who work in Jira). This ensures that any regression defects reported by QA are instantly sent to engineers for triage, and the release is not held up.
Here is how it works:
Since defects are automatically synced to Jira soon as they are reported, we eliminate any potential communication delays between the two teams, and more importantly, we ensure that no defects get missed.
Jama Connect Interchange is an integration platform that seamlessly integrates Jama Connect with other best-of-breed tools, like Atlassian Jira and Microsoft Excel.
JCI is built, supported, and continuously enhanced by dedicated teams at Jama Software. This means that JCI is deeply integrated with Jama Connect configurations and workstreams, providing you with a smart and seamless sync.
JCI supports both cloud-based and self-hosted instances of Jama Connect. To find out whether JCI would be a good fit for your organization, contact your Customer Success Manager.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/03/2023-03-16-jama-connect-jira-1.jpg5121024Debbie Mitchell/media/jama-logo-primary.svgDebbie Mitchell2023-03-16 03:00:152024-01-18 00:46:33Revolutionize Your Software Development Process with Seamless Integration of Jama Connect and Atlassian Jira
In this blog, we recap our press release, “Jama Software® Announces Insurance Framework to Simplify Insurance Product Development ” – To read the entire thing, click HERE
Jama Software® Announces Insurance Framework to Simplify Insurance Product Development
Streamline and Accelerate Insurance Product Development with Jama Connect®
Jama Software®, the industry-leading requirements management and traceability solution provider, has released an insurance framework and dataset that streamlines and simplifies product development for the insurance industry.
With increased challenges and a changing landscape, insurance carriers are facing competitive pressures related to growth and profitability. Carriers can now use Jama Connect® to make product development more efficient and deliver high quality products on time and on budget.
“Insurance carriers are facing increased pressure to bring new and competitive products to market, across multiple jurisdictions and lines of business. At Jama Software, we’ve developed a customizable framework to allow our insurance customers to create a scalable and standardized approach to managing their up-front product requirements through downstream systems development. This framework allows carriers to innovate, bring products to market quicker, and ultimately better serve their customers.”
Steven Meadows, Solutions Lead for Insurance Industry, Jama Software
“With the increased complexity associated with developing insurance products, the traditional method of insurance product development is no longer viable.” stated Tom Tseki, Chief Revenue Officer at Jama Software. “The challenges associated with business analysts leveraging spreadsheets to try to ensure everyone is working off a live single source of truth is nearly impossible. Business analysts are constantly chasing development teams to get progress and status updates while trying to manage changes and inform all the upstream and downstream activities/teams of the changes before too much work is completed. This disjointed and out-of-sync approach means a lack of real-time visibility and control which results in significant rework, increased costs, and product delays.” Tseki continued.
“A real solution for managing insurance product requirements and specifications across multiple states, products, and departments has long been overdue. Jama Connect is that solution, bringing business units and IT together on a common requirements platform. It’s intuitive enough for non-technical users, configurable around existing processes and toolsets, and sophisticated enough to support everything from requirements reuse, comparisons, collaboration, change control, integrated test management, and more. As product portfolios get more complex, it’s important to manage requirements so they don’t manage you. The Jama Connect insurance framework places your organization in the driver’s seat – increasing product quality and standardization, speed to market, and scalability. It’s a game changer.”
With effective requirements management and Live Traceability™ in Jama Connect, insurance carriers can easily manage new product requirements from ideation through to implementation, enhancement, and revisions — enabling them to meet regulatory requirements, maximize development efficiency, and accelerate speed to market.
If you want to learn more about how Jama Connect can help accelerate insurance product development, please download the datasheet below, or click here to speak with one of our experts and book a free trial.
If you want to learn more about how Jama Connect can help accelerate insurance product development,
please refer to our datasheet: Download the Datasheet
About Jama Software
Jama Software is focused on maximizing innovation success for complex development. Numerous firsts for humanity in fields such as fuel cells, electrification, space, autonomous vehicles, surgical robotics, and more all rely on Jama Connect® to minimize the risk of product failure, delays, cost overruns, compliance gaps, defects, and rework. Jama Connect uniquely creates Live Traceability™ through siloed development, test, and risk activities to provide end-to-end compliance, risk mitigation, and process improvement. Our rapidly growing customer base of more than 12.5 million users across 30 countries spans the automotive, insurance, financial services, medical devices, semiconductor, aerospace & defense and industrial manufacturing industries. For more information about how Jama Connect can help Insurance industries, please visit: Jama Software Solutions: Financial Services and Insurance
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/03/2023-03-15-insurance-release-1.jpg5121024Steven Meadows/media/jama-logo-primary.svgSteven Meadows2023-03-15 06:30:512024-01-18 00:47:30Jama Software® Announces Insurance Framework to Simplify Insurance Product Development
Jama Connect® Features in Five: Finding Information
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 video, Carleda Wade, Senior Consultantat Jama Software®, walks viewers through various ways of filtering and finding information within Jama Connect.
In this session, viewers will learn:
How to find information within Jama Connect®
Use search boxes throughout the application
Use facet filters to narrow search results
Interact with predefined filters
Create and manage new filters
Follow along with this short video below to learn more – and find the full video transcript below!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Carleda Wade: In this session, we will learn how to find information within Jama Connect, use search boxes throughout the application, use facet filters to narrow search results, interact with predefined filters, and create and manage new filters. So now let’s jump into our Jama instance.
Now we’re going to show you a couple different ways that you can search throughout the software. So here on our homepage we have this search bar. So let’s say I’d like to look for scheduling, since we just did manual scheduling in the previous session.
If I click on submit, you’ll see all these results. These results will show anytime the word scheduling shows up in any of the various projects. As you can see, this is a lot of results. So maybe we want to apply a filter so that we can narrow our list. So here I can click on filter items, and maybe potentially search for a keyword.
But I can also narrow this by looking at a certain project. So we’ve been working in our Jama 101, and then maybe I want to just look at system requirements, and let’s say stakeholder requirements. So here you’ll see are just the items that meet those two requirements. Another way to do this is by an advanced search. If I do an advanced search, first I can create a new filter. So let’s say I want to look for scheduling in my Jama 101 project, and I want to look at system requirements with the keyword of scheduling. When I do this, you can see here that I can preview, and that there will be three results. So if I click on there, it will give me a preview. And I can choose to save my filter. So now, essentially I’ve created a brand new filter.
Next, if I click here from my project explorer on filters, you’ll be able to see all of the various filters that are available. If I click on bookmarks, you’ll see this is the one that I just created, scheduling. And this little icon here indicates that it’s been bookmarked, or it’s become one of my favorites. If I go through the all, you can see other filters that have already been created within the system.
Wade: So let’s take a look at what happens when you right click. So when you right click on a filter. There are a few different options. So I could choose to remove this from my bookmarks if I so to desire. I could also choose to duplicate this. So let’s say for instance, this particular filter houses a lot of good information, and I want to be able to modify that information without changing the original filter. Maybe I would first duplicate this filter, then add onto it. I could also choose to edit the filter and view the criteria. If so desired, I could delete it. Another way to do this is by an advanced search. If I do an advanced search, first I can create a new filter. So let’s say I want to look for scheduling in my Jama 101 project, and I want to look at system requirements with the keyword of scheduling.
When I do this, you can see here that I can preview, and that there will be three results. So if I click on there, it will give me a preview. And I can choose to save my filter. So now, essentially I’ve created a brand new filter. Next, if I click here from my project explorer on filters, you’ll be able to see all of the various filters that are available. If I click on bookmarks, you’ll see this is the one that I just created, scheduling. And this little icon here indicates that it’s been bookmarked, or it’s become one of my favorites. If I go through the all, you can see other filters that have already been created within the system.
So let’s take a look at what happens when you right click. So when you right click on a filter. There are a few different options. So I could choose to remove this from my bookmarks if I so to desire. I could also choose to duplicate this. So let’s say for instance, this particular filter houses a lot of good information, and I want to be able to modify that information without changing the original filter. Maybe I would first duplicate this filter, then add onto it. I could also choose to edit the filter and view the criteria. If so desired, I could delete it.
Wade: Another really interesting thing to see is if I choose to apply the filter to the explorer. When I do that, you’ll see that only the items that meet the filter requirements show up, instead of the full exploratory like it did before. So that’s pretty interesting.
Going back in, the last option is send for review. So let’s say for instance, for this stakeholder requirements in draft status. If I wanted to go ahead and move these requirements from draft, I could choose right here from the filtered screen to send this for a review. And it would just open up in the review center. Another really interesting thing to see is if I choose to apply the filter to the explorer. When I do that, you’ll see that only the items that meet the filter requirements show up, instead of the full exploratory like it did before. So that’s pretty interesting.
Going back in, the last option is send for review. So let’s say for instance, for this stakeholder requirements in draft status. If I wanted to go ahead and move these requirements from draft, I could choose right here from the filtered screen to send this for a review. And it would just open up in the review center. Another way to be able to search is if we go to our activity stream. So here you can see there’s a little search bar for our activity stream. So let’s say I also typed in scheduling here. Or let’s say I wanted to see what Sarah has done within my stream. Here you can see all of the activities that Sarah has done within my instance here.
Another way to search for information is, let’s go back into our manual scheduling and go to our activities. Here you’ll see we have yet another search function, if we’d like. And then also, we could apply filters here if we so desire. Also, whenever using filters such as either here or any of the locations, we can also use built in operators. So let’s say we wanted to look for intelligent and scheduling in our project. You’ll see here that it comes up.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/02/FIF-Finding-Information-5in5-intro.jpg10801920Carleda Wade/media/jama-logo-primary.svgCarleda Wade2023-03-03 03:00:562024-01-18 00:52:40Jama Connect® Features in Five: Finding Information
Jama Connect® vs. IBM®DOORS®: Total Cost of Ownership: A User Experience Roundtable Chat
Increasing industry challenges and complexities are pushing innovative organizations to consider modernizing the tool(s) they use for requirements management (RM). In this blog series, Jama Connect® vs. IBM® DOORS®: A User Experience Roundtable Chat, we’ll present several information-packed video blogs covering the challenges that teams face in their project management process.
In the 10th and final episode of our Roundtable Chat series, Preston Mitchell – Sr Director, Global Business Consulting at Jama Software® – and Susan Manupelli – Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software® – discuss the total cost of ownership in product management.
To watch other episodes in this series, click HERE.
Watch the full video and find the video transcript below to learn more!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Preston Mitchell: All right. Welcome everybody, to episode 10 in our vlog series. Today, we’re going to be talking about total cost of ownership. I’m Preston Mitchell, the senior director of solutions at Jama Software, and I’m joined by my colleague, Susan Manupelli. Susan, do you want to introduce yourself?
Susan Manupelli: Sure. My name’s Susan Manupelli. I’m a senior solutions architect here at Jama Software, but I came from IBM, where I was a test architect for the last 20 years on some of their requirements management tools, so primarily Rational DOORS Next Generation and RequisitePro actually, before that.
Preston Mitchell: Excellent. Like Susan, I was a former IBM-er as well, so a user of many of those tools. Today, as you can see, we want to talk about kind of three main categories of total cost of ownership, IT infrastructure, so these are things like the actual physical hardware, the FTE administration costs, so like upgrades, maintenance, and then also the opportunity costs of when you do not adopt best-in-breed tools and processes. Why don’t we first start it off with the IT infrastructure costs? You know, Susan, in your experience with other RN tools, what have you found to be the challenges in this area?
Susan Manupelli: Sure. I’ll talk first about DOORS Next Generation. You know, DNG’s part of the ELM suite of products, that’s based on the Jazz architecture. It’s a very complex architecture. There’s a large number of servers you need, or VMs, to be able to stand up the solution. There’s an app server or some version of WebSphere. There’s a DB server for every application. So at a minimum with DNG, in addition to the app and DB server, you also would need a JTS server, an additional reporting server, [inaudible 00:02:08] or Data Warehouse. And if you have configuration management enabled, then there’s two additional servers that come with that, so for the global configuration manager and the LDX server. So-
Preston Mitchell: Interesting.
Susan Manupelli: And then of course, if you use any of the other applications of the ELM suite, there’s a server and database for those.
Preston Mitchell: Yeah, that’s quite a contrast to Jama, where we just require one application server and then a database server, which could be shared, actually, with other applications. Of course, that’s as far as self-host customers. Cloud customers really have no IT infrastructure costs at all, and I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of adopting a tool like Jama Connect. Okay, great. Next, I’d love to talk about the human or FTE maintenance costs that go along with tools. Susan, what’s your experience with other requirements management tools around the FTE costs?
Susan Manupelli: Sure. I’ll start off with DOORS Classic, which is an older client-server technology, and what I mean by that is that every user had to have software installed on their computer that was compatible with the server, so it was what we referred to as a thick client. An upgrade or maintenance of that would mean pushing out updates to however many users you have in your organization, potentially could be hundreds. So there was a lot of logistics involved with trying to get that upgrade done.
Preston Mitchell: Got it, and yeah, I imagine that’s downtime for the users, and a lot different than just a web-based tool that I sign in with my browser. The other thing that I know in working with customers that have migrated from DOORS Classic is DXL scripts and customization. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the hidden costs with those things.
Susan Manupelli: Yeah. Basically, any kind of customization that you want to do in DOORS Classic, you had to have somebody that could write a DXL script for it, that’s kind of a specialized skill, so there were costs with maintaining those, and particularly if they were used by across the organization.
Preston Mitchell: Is that any better with DOORS Next Generation?
Susan Manupelli:With DOORS Next Generation, there’s no DXL scripting or anything like that, but the thing that’s challenging with DOORS Next Generation is the upgrades and maintenance. Upgrades were often very complex and time-consuming. There was pretty high risk of failure, and then of course you have the time involved in roll back and trying it again. There’s also the ongoing maintenance of the middleware, would require a highly technical admin with some specialized skills in maybe database optimization, so Oracle or Db2. Also, keeping the system running optimally requires a full-time, highly skilled administrator for the ELM suite.
Preston Mitchell: Really? Full-time just for the backend? Wow.
Preston Mitchell: Yeah, that’s definitely different than kind of what our self-hosted customers experience. I mean, we try to make the self-hosted upgrades very easy and straightforward. It’s a button click in the admin console. And then obviously, for the majority of our customers who use our cloud solution, there’s really no upgrade or maintenance that they have to do at all. We push the upgrades for them. We handle that for them in an automated process, that’s validated and verified. So yeah, definitely different. Well, let’s transition to talk about adoption costs, and I want to bring my screen share up again, because you and I have spoken about really the opportunity costs of not using best-in-breed tools or processes, and it kind of really comes down to measurement. We really believe using Jama Connect, we can reduce the negative product outcomes, because we can help you measure your process performance. As management guru, Peter Drucker, said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improvement.” So Susan, maybe you could touch on what I find are the three primary ways that we can help our customers measure their performance.
Susan Manupelli: Sure. First of all, we can measure the quality of the requirements. This means properly define… making sure the requirements are properly defined, that they’re complete and consistent. And we actually have a new product, Jama Connect Advisor, that helps in this area. As far as the digital engineering, we can measure the level of collaboration that’s happening in the tool, the number of reviews, and the output from those reviews. And then also for live traceability. Traceability is one of the key reasons why people use a requirements management tool, and Jama does it better than any other tool that I’ve used. And in addition, we can measure how well you’re actually capturing that traceability.
Preston Mitchell: Yeah. And speaking to that, especially on the live traceability, we have for our cloud customers, this great benchmark, where we anonymize all the data, and you can actually see how you stack up against your peers in the industry with regards to the traceability completeness of your projects. So some really great return on investment by utilizing our cloud offering and being able to see the actual performance compared to your peers in the industry. Ultimately, I think everyone realizes the later you are in a product development lifecycle, it’s much more expensive to actually fix any errors that are found. So our whole goal at Jama Connect is really to lower the total cost of ownership, but really actually make your product development less costly by finding and fixing those errors way earlier in the cycle, in the requirements definition phase. Well Susan, thanks again for the quick chat, and sharing your perspective on cost of ownership. Appreciate it.
Susan Manupelli: Great. Thanks, Preston.
Preston Mitchell: Bye, everybody.
Is your data working for you? A consistent and scalable data model is instrumental for achieving Live Traceability™ and making data readily available across the development lifecycle.
Thank you for watching our 10th and final episode in this series, Jama Connect vs. IBM DOORS: Total Cost of Ownership. To watch other episodes in this series, click HERE.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/02/Doors-VLOG-Episode-10-intro-1.jpg10801920Preston Mitchell/media/jama-logo-primary.svgPreston Mitchell2023-03-01 03:00:242024-01-18 00:54:05Jama Connect® vs. IBM® DOORS®: Total Cost of Ownership: A User Experience Roundtable Chat
Jama Connect® vs. IBM®DOORS®: Requirements-Driven Testing: A User Experience Roundtable Chat
Increasing industry challenges and complexities are pushing innovative organizations to consider modernizing the tool(s) they use for requirements management (RM). In this blog series, Jama Connect® vs. IBM® DOORS®: A User Experience Roundtable Chat, we’ll present several information-packed video blogs covering the challenges that teams face in their project management process.
In Episode 9 of our Roundtable Chat series, Mario Maldari – Director of Solutions Architecture at Jama Software® – and Susan Manupelli – Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software® – discuss requirements validation, verification, and testing in addition to demonstrating test management in Jama Connect.
To watch other episodes in this series, click HERE.
Watch the full video and find the video transcript below to learn more!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Mario Maldari: Hello, welcome to the ninth edition of our vlog series. Today, we’re going to be talking about something that’s very important in requirements management, something that I’m particularly passionate about, and that’s requirements validation, verification, and testing. And I’m joined by my friend and colleague once again, Susan Manupelli. Susan and I have worked together for a long time, 15 years plus testing various requirements management tools using various techniques, and various software. I believe the most recent software you were using was IBM’s enterprise test management tool, something we used to call RQM. Looking back on all those years and all those tools you feel as though have been your biggest challenge.
Susan Manupelli: So talking about the ELM suite where we were talking about rational quality manager and also we were using that to test DNG. Really the issue, the biggest challenge is that they were two separate tools. So even though they were part of the same tool set, the UIs were completely different. They were very inconsistent in how you would use them. The review and approval aspect of RQM wasn’t that great. And again, it was completely different from the review and approval that you would get when you were working with DNG. And also because they were from two separate tools, in order to really get the traceability, that would be a challenge. You’d have to do reports that were outside of the individual tool tools. And then one of the biggest things too was the comparison. Things changed in RQM. It was not easy to find out what changed, even if you compared one test case to another.
Mario Maldari: Yeah, I recall some of those challenges. I think for me, the biggest challenge I had was the UI inconsistencies like you mentioned. Obviously, I was in one tool, I’d go to another. It’s completely different experience, completely different nomenclature. And then having to integrate between the tools and just frankly having to go to a separate tool to do the testing was problematic and challenging sometimes. So I think you hit an important topic in terms of having everything in one tool. And I’d like to show you how Jama does that. Okay. So in Jama, the fact that we have testing integrated into the tool allows you to do some pretty neat things. So as you can see here on my desktop, we have this dashboard, and I can define a relationship rule diagram in Jama where I can define that I want specific requirements to have validation points and test cases associated with them.
And so what that gives me is I can create some dashboard views for requirements, lacking test coverage, or I can even look at test case summaries. Right on the dashboard, I can look at test case progress, the priority of my tests. Jama even allows you when you’re testing to log defects. So I can track my defects here. And so for you and I, we always have to provide test case reports and summaries up through management, up through the development team. And so this allows you to have it all in one spot, which is really nice to have. So the testing itself in Jama, you basically enter it on the test plan tab and very similar to the way you and I worked, we have a concept of a test plan where you can define your test intent, the things you’re going to be testing, your approach, your schedule on your team, your entry criteria, your exit criteria.
And from there, as you pointed out, you can send this for a review and you can get an official sign-off from your development team or whomever you need to sign off on your test plan. And then once that’s in place, you can go to your test cases and you can start to group your tests according to functionality or whatever makes sense for your grouping and your organization of your suites of tests. And once they’re grouped, you can come to the test runs and this is where you actually will be doing your execution of your test. So I can click on one of these here and can start an execution and I can start to go through each step and pass or fail as I go through. And the nice thing about Jama, as I mentioned, is that you can actually go ahead and log a defect in real time and I can go ahead and log this defect.
And now when I’m saving this defect, it’s associated with this test execution run, which is associated with my test case, which is associated with multiple levels of requirements upstream. So now if I look at a traceability view, I will see my high level requirements traced all the way down to the defects. When I have logged a defect, I can actually go in and I can take a look at this test run and I can see the defects. And if I have something like an integration to another product like Jira for example, maybe my development team and is working in Jira and they love Jira, it automatically populates the defect in the defect tool like Jira. So a developer can come in here, they can make some changes, they can put in some comments, they can change the priority, the status, and all of that gets reflected back in Jama.
Mario Maldari: So really nice integration if you’re using something like Jira. From my perspective too, what would’ve been nice in my past test background is to have this concept of suspect trigger. And so if I look at the relationships for this particular requirement and I see that downstream there’s a validation of a test case, which is validated by length type, I can see that it’s flagged as suspect. So that means that something upstream has changed and my downstream test case is now suspect. And what does that mean? Maybe I need to change it, maybe I don’t. How do I know? I can come to the versions and I can say, “Well, the last time I tested this requirement was in our release candidate one, and what’s different now?” So I can compare our version three to version seven, run our compare tool, and I can see exactly what changed.
So as a tester, this is great to me, it’s not enough to know that something’s changed. I can actually see exactly what changed and maybe it’s just a spelling update and I don’t need to really change it. Or maybe it’s something more substantial like you see here. And at this point I can come in and I can make my change to my test and I can go ahead and I can clear the suspect flag.
So really nice level of granular control. What’s also good with the Jama’s we have these out of the box, and you’ll like this, Sue, out-of-the-box canned reports that have summaries of your tests, how many blocked, how many failed, how many passed executions. So these are canned reports that come with Jama. If you needed any customized reporting for your specific needs of the organization, we have that available as well. So really nice back to your point about having everything in one tool, this is it, and this is the benefit. Now, I know you’ve been at Jama for just about six months now. I’d love to hear your impression of the test management built-in, what your thoughts are there?
Susan Manupelli: Oh, sure. Yeah, I do. I definitely love how everything’s in one tool and the ease with which you can just trace, actually verify the testing of your requirements. You can just go from requirements straight down to multiple levels of decomposition to your test cases. So you can see, answer the question, did your requirement are your requirements passing, which is great. And also the ability to display related queries right on the dashboard. I think that’s a huge plus the consistency of the UI between what you do for requirements, creating a test case isn’t any different than creating any other requirements.
So it’s a very familiar UI for both operations, which I think is important. The review and approval piece is really a nice strong point for Jama, and to be able to apply that to reviews for test cases is really great. And I just think it’s a really streamlined UI. It really has everything you need and nothing that you don’t. So I just think it’s a great tool. And then there’s one other aspect that I really like is the impact analysis. You mentioned being able to trace when something’s changed after the fact. It’s also to be able to say, “Hey, we’re looking at making a change here.” There’s one button in Jama, you click that impact analysis and it tells you all of your test cases that you might need to revisit if you make that change.
Mario Maldari: I call that the proactive method.
Susan Manupelli: Yes.
Mario Maldari: Yeah, the impact analysis is extremely important. And if you were a developer in an organization and you changed a requirement or you were about to change a requirement and you knew you had 30 tests that are associated with that, you could run the impact analysis. See all of those, and you could proactively warn your test team, “Hey guys, I’m about to make this change. Here it is. I’ll explain it to you. We can have a separate review and approval.”
So it really contains all of that and controls all of that for you. I’ve often said to people, it’s one thing to have your requirements in a tool, and that’s the first step. Define your requirements, have your traceability. But if you’re not doing your testing and validating those requirements, then how do you know that you built the right thing, right? So extremely important aspect testing to requirements in the supply. So any requirements gathering process so I’m glad we could talk about it today. Sue, glad I could have you to talk to about it. And I’d like to thank everyone for their time and thanks for participating in the vlog series and we’ll see you on the next one.
Is your data working for you? A consistent and scalable data model is instrumental for achieving Live Traceability™ and making data readily available across the development lifecycle.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/02/Doors-VLOG-Episode-9-intro-2.jpg10801920Mario Maldari/media/jama-logo-primary.svgMario Maldari2023-02-16 03:00:252024-01-18 01:02:56Jama Connect® vs. IBM® DOORS®: Requirements-Driven Testing: A User Experience Roundtable Chat
In this blog, we recap the “Managing Functional Safety in Development Efforts for Robotics Development” webinar.
Industrial manufacturing firms are undergoing rapid transformation as they navigate talent shortages, supply disruptions, digital adoption acceleration, and more. At the same time, they work diligently to accelerate time to market, streamline risk management, and keep accuracy and safety at the forefront.
In this webinar, learn about functional safety challenges during the development of complex robotics systems, and how to conform to IEC 61508. Also, learn about how Jama Software’s new robotics solution allows developers to quickly leverage a template and documentation to kickstart development efforts ensuring quicker time to market, and higher quality and safer products.
You’ll learn more about:
Functional safety development challenges
IEC 61508 best practices
Tips and tricks on certification
Jama Software’s new robotics solution offering and benefits
Below is an abbreviated transcript and a recording of our webinar.
Managing Functional Safety in Development Efforts for Robotics Development
Steven Meadows: Hi everyone, and welcome to the webinar on Managing Functional Safety and Development Efforts for Robotics Development. In terms of the agenda today, this is what we’re going to be covering. We’re going to be starting off with speaker and company introductions. We’ll then look at functional safety and providing IEC 61508 overview, associated challenges, associated best practices. We’ll then switch gears and talk a little bit around live traceability followed by robotics development best practices. And then we’ll finally wrap up with Jama Software’s Robotics Solution. So let’s start with some speaker introductions. Go ahead, Nicole.
Nicole Pappler: Okay. Hey everybody. My name’s Nicole Pappler. I am a Senior Functional Safety Expert at AlektoMetis. I started working with safety critical systems more than 20 years ago, working with automation, working with automotive and other domains, and always moving around in the safety critical projects with safety critical systems, being a developer, being a tester, being on the complete system side. About 10 years ago, I started then to work as an assessor of for functional safety at TÜV SÜD. And about three years ago, started together with my business partner, AlektoMetis to provide independent consulting and assessment services using all our experiences that we had up to now. If you want to Google me, I’m also active in several open source for functional safety, so you should be able to follow me around. If you want to contact me, my social media handle is nicpappler, so you can find me on GitHub Discord and usually wherever you want want to look.
As AlektoMetis, our company, together we have more than 20 years of experience. We provide a network of experts for functional safety, for cybersecurity, for multiple domains, so automation, railway, automotive. And also, we can provide you with services regarding license compliances, processes, quality management. We have a set of trainings and workshops available for functional safety, for security, or with our network, also for other topics that you need to cover for critical systems and to keep up to date and to drive topics forward, we participate actively in international committees for standard digitization like the IEC, ISO or DIN or also industry networks like the Bitkom, or the Industry Business Network 4.0.
Steven Meadows: Great. Thanks for that, Nicole. So hi, everyone. Thanks again for joining the webinar. My name is Steven Meadows and I’m a Principal Solutions Lead here at Jama Software, primarily working with our customers in the industrial space, including robotics teams. So I’ve been at Jama for around about three years. I’m an expert in requirements management and before Jama, I worked extensively with the Atlassian tool stack as well as in various implementation functions. Excuse me. I do want to briefly provide some context on Jama Software and what we do. So our main purpose is to ensure that innovators succeeds with client success at the forefront of pretty much everything that we do.
For years of industry specific experience and thousands of client engagements, we bring best practices to bear to maximize the success rate of the product development process. So we work in a number of verticals that you can see at the bottom of the slide here, including medical device, automotive and semiconductor, aerospace and defense, software development. And last but certainly not least, industrial manufacturing and robotics automation. So we’re the largest requirements platform on the market today, and our Jama Connect platform is the number one requirements management software according to independent user reviews on G2 Crowd. We’re also the market share leader of all products, including those from bigger companies and the leader in user adoption and success. So with that, I will hand over to Nicole who’s going to be talking about functional safety and IEC 61508 in terms of an overview as well as challenges.
Nicole Pappler: So first of all, I’d like to give you an overview of what’s all this about with functional safety and with IEC 61508. So I’m sure you are here because you already heard about functional safety. Maybe you’re a pro, beginner with functional safety. So first of all, functional safety is the topic that’s associated with reducing risks that are associated with products that can be caused either by random faults, that means fault of a sense or faults by controller, just random things stop working or start working in a very inconsistent way. So one of the big topics in functional safety is really avoiding random faults, avoiding faults due to hardware components just dying on you. And the other big topic in functional safety is the avoidance of risk due to systematic faults.
So systematic faults are usually faults that happen during development, that happen during deployment or maintenance of a product that are due to topics that are not covered, that are due to hazards you have not considered. That are due to functions you haven’t implemented correctly or that haven’t been tested if they are correctly implemented, and then go into the field in an inconsistent or insufficient way. So functional safety can be achieved then by the methods of engineering and of process application. It means the random faults you avoid by systematically identifying what are the critical components, what are critical parts, what other critical functions within your system. And to then choose suitable and robust system architectures suitable and robust components and hardware parts to be integrated into your system.
Nicole Pappler: So first of all, I’d like to give you an overview of what’s all this about with functional safety and with IEC 61508. So I’m sure you are here because you already heard about functional safety. Maybe you’re a pro, beginner with functional safety. So first of all, functional safety is the topic that’s associated with reducing risks that are associated with products that can be caused either by random faults, that means fault of a sense or faults by controller, just random things stop working or start working in a very inconsistent way. So one of the big topics in functional safety is really avoiding random faults, avoiding faults due to hardware components just dying on you. And the other big topic in functional safety is the avoidance of risk due to systematic faults.
So systematic faults are usually faults that happen during development, that happen during deployment or maintenance of a product that are due to topics that are not covered, that are due to hazards you have not considered. That are due to functions you haven’t implemented correctly or that haven’t been tested if they are correctly implemented, and then go into the field in an inconsistent or insufficient way. So functional safety can be achieved then by the methods of engineering and of process application. It means the random faults you avoid by systematically identifying what are the critical components, what are critical parts, what other critical functions within your system. And to then choose suitable and robust system architectures suitable and robust components and hardware parts to be integrated into your system.
And then to avoid systematic fault by applying a suitable development process, by applying suitable verification measures, by using a suitable deployment and maintenance process. And then also going into a suitable change management process for your system, so that you don’t add bugs and sufficiencies to your system that wouldn’t be there by definition. So easily, you don’t need to start thinking about how to do this on your own. So there are standards around. And the main functional safety standard is the IEC 61508. It’s a standard that talks about functional safety for electrical and electronic and in any kind of ways programmable safety related systems. And although there are a lot of other safety standards around, IEC 61508 is still not only the most generic, but also the most used and most applied standard, not only in other industries but specifically also in the automation industry.
Nicole Pappler: So what will IEC 61508 help you with? So what is defined there? Most of it really consists of methods and definitions and explanations, how to do engineering and how to do the planning of your engineering, of the safety relevant systems and equipment. Then with the process, how to reduce your development issues by planning ahead, by planning your resources, by deciding what kind of methods that are suitable for your kind of development. There are standard planning methods defined. You need to have a safety plan that’s more or less the project management plan thingy for your safety relevant tasks. You have the definition of processes, so everything will be done in a consistent and traceable way. You will have templates though that you won’t have to invent the structure of a document that invents the structure of your definitions every time. Again, the standard also talks, let’s say on a very high level, but on a very important level about safety architectural requirements.
It walks you through a few basic architectural topics like one channel systems, two channel systems, three channel systems. How do you need to set them up? What are the minimum requirements regarding diagnosis you want to do on live on these channels? So that already gives you a lot of help with the basic setup. What is the minimum requirement? And then you can go from there really deciding is this sufficient for my use case. IEC 61508 also is very strong in the definition on verification activities, be this on the one hand side for inspections, for analyzers, for reviews of your plant concept, of your requirements of your specifications. And also on how to do testing on multiple stages of your development or after deployment or during maintenance. It also gives you guidance then after development, after production of your system, how to mitigate the issues or to avoid issues that might be introduced during installation or during integration of your system into a bigger system.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/02/Copy-of-WB-2022-01-12_Managing-Product-Development-Complexities_Social-Image-1.png5121024Steven Meadows/media/jama-logo-primary.svgSteven Meadows2023-02-07 03:00:312024-01-18 01:24:08[Webinar Recap] Managing Functional Safety in Development Efforts for Robotics Development
Jama Connect® Features in Five: Document View
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 video, Katie Huckett, Senior Product Managerat Jama Software®, walks viewers through Document View, a new feature offered in Jama Connect.
In this session, viewers will learn how Document View, now available alongside list and single-item views, allows users to:
Author, read, and edit items in line in a single view while maintaining an item-based structure within project hierarchies.
Improve consistency and accuracy of requirements quality by incorporating built-in support for Jama Connect Advisor™, an add-on to Jama Connect.
Jama Connects complete requirements authoring solutions supports different use cases and different preferred user work styles such as those previously performed in siloed tools like Microsoft Word or Excel.
With Document View, you can leverage all the functionality and toolbar actions of reading view, such as filtering and configuring items, reuse, batch transition, send for review, edit and more. Double-click on an item to open quick edit mode with the option to expand to full edit mode. Insert new items without losing your place in the document, add comments and lock or unlock items.
Follow along with this short video below to learn more – and find the full video transcript below!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Katie Huckett: Hi, my name is Katie Huckett and I’m a senior product manager here at Jama Software. In this video, I’m going to walk you through Jama Connects new feature Document View. Jama Connect now provides Document View, alongside list and single item view. Document view allows users to author, read and edit items in line in a single view while maintaining an item-based structure within project hierarchies. Document view improves consistency and accuracy of requirements quality by incorporating built-in support for Jama Connect Advisor™ and add-on to Jama Connect. Jama Connects complete requirements authoring solutions supports different use cases and different preferred user work styles such as those previously performed in siloed tools like Microsoft Word or Excel.
With Document View, you can leverage all the functionality and toolbar actions of reading view, such as filtering and configuring items, reuse, batch transition, send for review, edit and more. Double-click on an item to open quick edit mode with the option to expand to full edit mode. Insert new items without losing your place in the document, add comments and lock or unlock items.
Let’s see what this looks like in Jama Connect. Here in Jama Connect, I wanted to start on the current reading view so that you can see as I toggle over to our new Document View the transition to the new, clean, modern design. We’ve removed the horizontal lines between the items for a more seamless document experience. The item ID and current version are visible under the item name and comments and locking functionality have moved to the right of the item name so they don’t get lost within the content itself. Use the edit feature to quickly edit items without changing views or manually tracking your place in the document. I’ve opened what we call quick edit mode, which is a condensed form of fields only visible on the current view, as well as any additional required fields that you may have missed that need to be completed in order to save the item.
If you need to see the additional fields available for this item, expand to full edit mode and then you’ll be able to access any additional fields that you need. Quickly return to quick edit mode to complete any edits that you need before saving and completing your work. As I mentioned previously, Document View provide support for Jama Connect Advisor™. As you highlight text in a rich text field that you have enabled advisor for, you’ll notice an analyze button beneath the field. As you analyze the results, you’ll then see any recommendations that have been found. Click the view details button to see the information in more detail.
Huckett: Create new items and Document View with our new inline insert. I’m going to insert a new item between item one and two here, so I have a new requirement that needs to go in here. So you’ll see as you hover between the items, you have a plus button for inline insert form, and I’m going to go ahead and insert a new design description. You’ll notice that our inline insert form is very similar to the quick ad functionality that’s available in the ad dropdown in the content header. Only the name and description fields are visible, name being the only one that’s required. We are bypassing any additional required fields at this point so that you can quickly add as many items as you need to and then go back and edit in more detail and fill out the remaining required fields.
So you’ll notice I’ll add in a name and description into this item. You’ll note the Jama Connected Advisor analysis is also available in the inline insert functionality. We’re going to save this item. You’ll receive a toast message that lets you know your item’s been created, and you’ll see that new item appear in between items one and the previous item two that I had before. So as I mentioned, there is an additional required field on this item that I did not complete before. So I’ll go back in, edit this item, find that additional required field and assign someone to it so that we can then fully save and complete this item for the time being.
In order to view comments, you’ll click on the comments icon next to the item name. After clicking on the icon, you’ll see the comments stream up here in a modal above Document View where you can interact with, comment and reply to any comments on the item. Next, I’ll take you over to the admin section for your Jama Connect administrators to customize and configure Document View and Jama Connect Advisor™ to your organization’s needs. For each item type, it can be configured for default Document View settings. You’ll find a new projects Document View option in the view dropdown where you can then place your default visible fields. Jama Connect Advisor™ can be turned on for any rich text field on any item type your organization chooses and left off for any item types that don’t need the analysis.
Huckett: When you open a rich text field on an item type, you’ll notice a brand new checkbox for Jama Connect Advisor™. Enable advisor for that particular item type field and save your configuration either before or after the individual item field configuration for Jama Connect Advisor™. Don’t forget to go into the dedicated admin section to enable the INCOSE rules in whole or selectively based on your needs and the EARS patterns.
For more information about Document View, please contact your customer success manager or Jama consultant. And if you would just like to learn more about how Jama Connect can optimize your product development processes, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com. Thank you.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/02/FIF-Document-View-5in5-intro.png10801920Katie Huckett/media/jama-logo-primary.svgKatie Huckett2023-02-03 03:00:592024-01-18 01:26:01Jama Connect® Features in Five: Document View
Jama Connect® vs. IBM®DOORS®: Reuse and Variant Management: A User Experience Roundtable Chat
Increasing industry challenges and complexities are pushing innovative organizations to consider modernizing the tool(s) they use for requirements management (RM). In this blog series, Jama Connect® vs. IBM® DOORS®: A User Experience Roundtable Chat, we’ll present several information-packed video blogs covering the challenges that teams face in their project management process.
In Episode 8 of our Roundtable Chat series, Mario Maldari – Director of Solutions Architecture at Jama Software® – and Gary Hayes – Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software® – discuss the importance of reuse and variant management for product teams.
To watch other episodes in this series, click HERE.
Watch the full video and find the video transcript below to learn more!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Mario Maldari: Hello everyone. Welcome to episode eight in our vlog series. Hope you’ve enjoying the series so far. Today, we’ll be discussing the important topic of requirements reuse, and I’m joined by my friend and colleague Gary Hayes today. Gary, would you like to introduce yourself?
Gary Hayes: Sure thing, Mario. Thank you. My name’s Gary Hayes. I am part of Mario’s team. I’ve been working with systems and software engineering teams for the last 25 plus years, just recently have joined Jama. Prior to that, I spent 18 years working with Rational Software and IBM, supporting their systems and software engineering tools suite. Got a lot of experience in the early days with Requisite Pro as part of Rational Software before being acquired by IBM and then, morphing into the Jazz-based tools and Requirements Composer, acquiring Telelogic and DOORS, and then, DOORS Next Generation. So, been around tools for a long time.
Mario Maldari:
Thanks Gary. You’re like me. We’ve been in Requirement Space for many years, so thanks for that, Gary. As both of us know, being in the requirement space for a while, requirements reuse is an extremely important concept. Whether you’re creating a common library set of requirements or you’re doing variant development, this is something that we experienced through many years of working with requirements tools. Very important concept, and curious as your perception working with other requirements tools regarding reuse and in particular, maybe the DOORS family of products. How has that been for you?
Gary Hayes: Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey. In the early days of Requisite Pro and actually, my first exposure to requirements tools were with Technology Builders and Calibre. Calibre version 1 as a matter of fact. Back in those days, they were client server tools that really didn’t have any kind of reuse features except copy and paste. Clone and own, if you will. And DOORS, my first exposure to DOORS was that same way. You could create linkages, you could copy modules and reuse those and different projects as they got spun up, but the real reuse didn’t come into play until you got to more modernly architected tools like DOORS Next Generation. DOORS Next Generation has a variety of ways in which they could reuse components or reuse different artifacts with the environment. For one, you could start off a project, and clone an existing project, and use everything that you had before.
But what they really started to do was use the change sets, which was really change sets with code development where you could branch and merge. You really started seeing a lot more sophisticated ways to do reuse within a project. It made it really interesting and it is fairly easy to understand for people using requirements. You really wanted to have a use case that matched up with one, what you needed in an environment. And then also, you wanted to match up with the maturity of your organization. You didn’t want to overwhelm them with a process that they couldn’t handle. DOORS Next Generation took that to the new level by Introducing Global Configuration Management or GCM for short. Very complex way to do business. And it was really a way to include not just requirements for reuse, but all of the artifacts across the software and systems engineering lifecycle.
Really interesting, sounds really great, but like I said, very complex, and once you turned it on to use in your environment, you couldn’t turn it off, so it did not lend itself to a lot of flexibility. It was flexible from the point of view that yeah, I can make components in different disciplines and mix and match them as I chose to, but you really had to have a mature organization and a mature administration group to keep it under control, and make sure everything stayed on track.
Mario Maldari: Yeah, the complexity, I think it’s a challenge for adoption. And I think targeting some of the very large, big customers and modeling their use case, I think that becomes very difficult for smaller customers when they try to use some simple use cases and take them forward. So, I think that that complexity is a challenge. Well, let me show you something. I want to talk a little bit about how reuse is done in Jama, and I’d like to show it to you. Some of the common reuse scenarios that I’ve seen here at Jama, but as well as an industry is developing common libraries of requirements where you’re wanting to develop once and be able to reuse these requirements across the board in different projects, even within the same project. Parallel development. Very common to reuse requirements for your parallel development as well as variant reuse, being able to use them across your variants. These are very common scenarios that we see in industry today.
Jama has a very simple implementation for reuse, but it’s quite powerful. Anything in Jama can be reused, whether it’s a set of requirements or an individual requirement. And to do so, you simply will click on the requirement, and you can say reuse item. And here, you can share this requirement. Within the same project, you can reuse it, or you can reuse it in a different project. And you have a few different options here as well. You can add a relationship from the original item, so you have a link back to it. You can include all tags, attachments, and links. You also have the ability to include the relationships from the source item, include related items as well in minor relationships. A lot of different options when you go to reuse the requirement. And once it’s reused, you can take a look at the requirement itself, and see where it’s been reused. You can see in this case, the current item I have here I’m looking at, but then this requirement’s also shared across and reused in two different projects.
And you’ll see it’s out of sync. That means the requirement’s been evolving and changing in these different projects, which is what you’d expect in this case. Now, if I wanted to get a little bit more information and see okay, well, how are those requirements evolving and changing? I can take a look at the synced items here across the whole project. And if I want to take a look at this particular requirement and see how it’s been evolving and changing, I can take a look at it and I say, “It’s out of sync.” And I can say, “Well, let’s compare.” And here, I can get a side by side comparison of how the requirements he has evolved in this project. You can see the source project, I have the name with a global impact. And in the project that I’ve reused it in, I can see easily that this requirement has changed to a North America scope only. A really nice side-by-side comparison in terms of how the requirements are evolving.
Even more to that, there’s a nice UI here where if I decide that the requirement, that’s evolving, I want to override it with the source, I can do that easily. Or perhaps this requirement that’s evolving should be the new standard. I can overwrite the original with the evolved requirement. A lot of options in terms of managing your reused requirements. But I think the key for me, from my perspective with the Jama implementation, it’s very simple, very easy to use. You can build from a very simple case to a very complex case as you go incrementally, so you’re not overwhelmed instantly with the reuse scenario itself. A nice supporting UI to deal with reuse within Jama. Let me just stop there, Gary, and see if you had any perceptions. You’re relatively new to Jama, so just curious to your thoughts.
Gary Hayes: Yeah, what I really like about this is that it’s easy to enable. It’s really kind of straightforward. It has a variety of use cases that it supports. Got some basic features, but it also supports some advanced features, so you can turn on as much or as little as you need to be effective. Also, the people that are part of the project, the common users, they get that visual cue. I noticed that in the interface, anything that was in a reuse state had the little dot next to it. If I was curious about the reused state of it, I could drill down on that and do some comparisons myself to see how it evolved over time. I think that one, it’s important that it’s easy to use and people aren’t afraid of using it. They can investigate it and it’s very simple. Simple, yet powerful in my estimation.
Mario Maldari: Yeah, I think that’s a good way of saying it. And of course, you and I have been in requirements for 20 years plus, we know that reuse is such an important concept, but it’s really about striking the balance between features and functionality and ease of use. It’s something that every requirement tool needs to have and needs to support. But the question is how easy is it to adopt? And how easy is it to use? You want to find yourself being productive and not wasting a lot of time and energy out of the box.
Gary Hayes: Exactly. Yep, absolutely.
Mario Maldari: Well, Gary, I want to thank you very much for your time today, and want to thank everyone watching this vlog series, and look forward to seeing you on the next one.
Gary Hayes: Thank you.
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We hope you’ll join us for future Jama Connect Jama Connect vs. DOORS topics, including Requirements-Driven Testing and Total Cost of Ownership.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2023/01/Doors-VLOG-Episode-5-intro-2.jpg10801920Mario Maldari/media/jama-logo-primary.svgMario Maldari2023-02-01 03:00:272024-01-18 01:29:46Jama Connect® vs. IBM® DOORS®: Reuse and Variant Management: A User Experience Roundtable Chat
