Tag Archive for: jama software

jama software

Jama Software is Announcing Record Growth, Profitability & Unmatched Customer Loyalty

It started with an idea – to build an easy-to-use requirements management platform that would address ever-increasing product and software development complexities. Now, 13 years later, Jama Software is an innovative, award-winning industry leader dedicated to helping our customers around the world shape the future by catalyzing their ideas into reality.


Jama Software, the leading requirements management solution for building complex products and integrated systems, today shared details on its business performance during the pandemic. “We value transparency and especially in these uncertain times we owe our clients and prospects visibility into our business performance,” said Marc Osofsky, Chief Executive Officer at Jama Software. On nearly all objective measurements, Jama Software is the #1 company for requirements management software.

I want to thank our clients for their tremendous passion for Jama Connect and its critical impact on remote R&D and engineering team productivity. This has led directly to record growtin usage, industry leading retention, revenue, profitability, cash flow and product investment.
– Marc Osofsky, CEO, Jama Software

 

Customer Usage
  • Items – over 480 million requirements items managed by our clients
  • Users – over 12.5 million active users
  • Reviews – over 1,250 review sessions daily
  • Cloud – over 100TB of requirements in our managed cloud (clients may also self-host): largest requirements management provider in the cloud
Product Investment & Investors
  • Investment – the largest annual budget solely dedicated to requirement management software development and client success
  • Product – over 2,500 enhancements made
  • Investors – the only requirements management company backed by a top tier investor: Insight Partners with $30 billion under management

Our customers are leading innovation in crucial industries like medical device, automotive, industrial manufacturing and aerospace.” said Osofsky. They’re not only transforming the products and systems they build, but the technology and process they use to build them. Jama Connect is critical to helping engineering teams stay aligned to hit delivery timelines while maintaining product quality and compliance.
-Marc Osofsky, CEO, Jama Software

Observance of Juneteenth | Jama Software

Last week, our CEO Marc Osofsky announced that Jama Software will be adding Juneteenth to the official paid holiday calendar. We acknowledge that as a company, we have more to learn, more to give, more to change, and more to do to promote racial equality.

Over the next several months, we are planning, implementing, and executing short-term initiatives and building out a long-term plan as part of our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Program to hold ourselves accountable for action.

Please join us in observing Juneteenth and promoting racial equality. We’ve compiled a list of virtual events and resources to educate and reflect on the history of Juneteenth.


Webinars:
  • Race and Place: Racism and Resilience in Oregon’s Past and Future
    June 19 | 12:00 PM-1:00 PM PT
    REGISTER
  • WITH INSIGHT: An Open Conversation on Race and Social Justice with Wes Moore, CEO of Robin Hood
    June 19 | 10:00 AM ET
    REGISTER
  • Racism, Inequality, and the US Healthcare System
    June 19 | 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM PT
    REGISTER
  • Re-envisioning and Re-building the Immigration Justice Movement
    June 19 | 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM ET
    REGISTER
  • JuneTeenth – Leveling the Playing Field
    WATCH VIDEO
  • Juneteenth Conference
    June 19 – 20 | All day
    REGISTER

Virtual Juneteenth Celebrations:
  • Not Just A Month (NJAM) Presents: A Virtual Juneteenth Celebration
    June 19 | 12:00 PM PT
    REGISTER
  • Black-In Festival
    June 19 – 21 | All day
  • The 90’s vs. Everybody Virtual House Party
    Soundtrack by DJ JAZZY JEFF
    Thursday | June 18 | 9 PM ET
    LIVESTREAM
  • Food for the Body, Food for the Soul
    June 18 – 20
    REGISTER

Resources:
  • A Powerful Letter from My Great-Great-Grandfather, Who Escaped Slavery in 1855
    Author: TED Guest Author
    READ
  • A Historic Conversation for Healing and Unity
    Hosted by: Tony Robbins
    LISTEN
  • Talks to Help You Understand Racism in America
    Ted Playlist
    WATCH
  • The Economic Impact of Closing the Racial Wealth Gap
    READ
  • Support Black Owned Oregon Businesses
    GET THE LIST

 

 

TrustRadius Application Lifecycle Management

 

TrustRadius Names Jama Connect™ a 2020 Top-Rated Application Lifecycle Management Platform

We are so happy to share that Jama Software has been recognized as a leader among application lifecycle management (ALM) tools for the second year in a row. “We are honored to have received this recognition by TrustRadius. We have the largest team of developers focused on requirements management for safety-critical products,” said Jama Software CEO, Marc Osofsky. “And we’re honored that the most innovative companies in industries such as medical device, automotive, semiconductor, aerospace and defense have chosen to work with us so that together we can shape the future.”

Customer-centric Criteria

With a trScore of 7.9 out of 10] and over 94 verified reviews, Jama Connect™ is proud to be recognized by the TrustRadius community as a valuable player in the Application Lifecycle Management software category.

One of the things we’re most proud of is that our customers selected us—with their excellent satisfaction ratings—as a top-rated ALM tool. This rating was based purely on TrustRadius’ verified customer reviews; there is no paid placement, and analyst opinions do not influence the rankings. To qualify, a product must have 10 or more recent reviews and a trScore of 7.5 or higher, indicating above-average satisfaction for business technology. Read more about the Top Rated criteria.

“Jama Software is one of those rare SaaS companies that has a passionate following among our users,” said Jama Software CEO, Marc Osofsky. “When our users change companies, they bring us with them. Trust Radius focuses on user satisfaction and reflects our pride in the passion of Jama Nation.”

What Our Customers are Saying

Here are just a few quotes from TrustRadius verified users on how they’re using Jama Connect:

“JAMA Connect is used by our Medicaid Pharmacy Solutions Business Analysis Team for managing requirements for our clients. JAMA Connect provides the solution for housing our requirements in a repository to meet the needs of our customers. The review center is great to review requirements electronically instead of sitting in a meeting to review them. Version control creates a great audit trail.“
-Analyst in Information Technology, Hospital & Healthcare

 

“Jama Connect is the source of truth for requirements. We have used it internally…to communicate between Engineering, Operations, and Scientists, but also to do requirement reviews with external consortia, to get their input. We are also using it for requirement flow-down and traceability and using several report tools. …having an agile way of dealing with requirements helps us.”
-Engineer, Research Company

 

“We use Jama Connect for requirements management. It’s used across several business units within R&D to manage requirements from initial creation all the way to generating final design traceability matrices. It has been particularly helpful with managing systems with several subsystems that each have sets of requirements. Rather than waste a significant amount of engineering time, Jama allows us to generate requirement documentation (MRS, PRS, SRS, HRS, V&V Plans, and DTMs) with very little effort.”
-Engineer in Research and Development for Medical Device Company

 

Our Customers’ Success is Our Success

Helping enable our customers’ success is at the core of everything we do. While we take pride in winning this award, our greatest success is watching how our customers use Jama to not only achieve but exceed their business objectives. “Our customer bonds are deeply rooted and personal. We celebrate the product and career successes we help enable and engage deeply on product direction,” said Osofsky.

We continue to innovate, make improvements to our platform, add new features, expand our integrations, and strive to enhance and broaden our service offerings. Our goal is to continue to provide best-in-class requirements, risk, and test management products and outstanding customer service to our customers now and into the future.

At Jama, we’re proud to create products that inspire such gracious feedback in our user community. Thank you for supporting our work, and for sharing your feedback on TrustRadius.


About TrustRadius: TrustRadius is the customer voice and insights platform that helps tech buyers make great decisions, and helps technology vendors acquire and retain great customers. Each month, over half a million B2B technology buyers use over 222,000 verified reviews and ratings on TrustRadius.com to make informed purchasing decisions. Headquartered in Austin, TX, TrustRadius was founded by successful entrepreneurs and is backed by Next Coast Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and LiveOak Venture Partners.

At Jama Software, we live vicariously through our innovative customers. We strive to provide them with the best product development platform on the planet, and today I’m thrilled to share some exciting news that will strengthen that commitment for years to come.

Jama Software has received a $200M growth equity investment from Insight Venture Partners with participation from Madrona Venture Group. The new funding will be used to accelerate our long-term global growth and drive the expansion of the Jama product development platform.

With Insight Venture Partners —  one of the world’s most well-respected venture capital and growth equity firms — Jama has found an investor that shares our passion for product development and has also helped many other dynamic companies grow. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $18 billion and invested in over 300 companies worldwide.

The investment from Insight Venture Partners will give us the ability to speed our product roadmap, support our ongoing global expansion, and broaden our partner alliances and product ecosystem.

Since our founding in 2007, one of the big trends we’ve seen is the increasing complexity of product development coupled with the intense pressures of getting to market faster than ever.

Companies simply cannot compete at the level necessary to be successful in today’s marketplace while relying on yesterday’s development processes. The Jama product development platform was created to help businesses overcome those challenges.

Today’s news solidifies our belief that Jama has the potential to empower many more forward-thinking companies around the world to achieve the success they envision by releasing the game-changing products of tomorrow.

On a personal note, I also believe in the importance of building a strong, standalone, high-growth software business in Portland, Oregon. This investment gives Jama a long runway to make growth happen and build an enterprise software business of significant scale that will not only help Jama achieve its business goals, but also boost our local business community in the process.

To everyone who has contributed up to this point, we give thanks as we look towards our shared bright future. It’s truly a new day for Jama and our customers, and we’re more excited than ever to build great products.

release

“Delivering a release is a little like wrapping up a present and giving it to our customers” – Maarika Krumhansl, Release Manager at Jama Software

When I mention to folks outside of Jama that I’m a Release Manager at Jama, the most common reaction is “Interesting!” and then shortly thereafter “…What does a Release Manager do?”

Release Management means slightly different things at different companies. Some companies employ DevOps Release Engineers instead of Release Managers. Some companies roll the Release Management function into the Product Team. Other companies have their build, test, deploy, documentation, and customer communication so streamlined that they have no need for a Release Manager. I personally come at Release Management from a DevOps background. In a previous job as a Deployment Developer I had the opportunity to build that company’s first Continuous Integration pipeline. I was also responsible for releasing and packaging a Java application for production deployments. I am a huge advocate for Agile methodologies and my Release Management philosophy is heavily based on personal experience as well as learning from the industry leaders.

Regardless of who or what process performs the role of Release Management, it is based on three primary principles: Traceability, Reproducibility, and Measurability.

Traceability: The ability to see how one piece of information – e.g. a requirement, a story, a git commit, an automated test run – connects to any and all other relevant pieces of information in a release, either upstream or downstream in the item hierarchy (or forwards/backwards in the workflow). For example, a release is traceable if any member of the organization is able to see which epics are shipping with a release, the specific stories in those epics, and any bugs or defects slated to be fixed. For each ticket (story or defect) in a release, it is also possible to determine exactly which git commit(s) represents the work done to satisfy the requirements, who performed the code review and the desk review, and whether the automated unit-, integration and functional tests passed against that commit.

Reproducibility: At its core, this is about the ability to generate an exact copy of (i.e. reproduce) a release of Jama. A release is made up of multiple components, including the actual binary artifacts, the deployment method/scripts, the documentation, and the environment configurations. Binary repositories (e.g. Nexus, Artifactory, etc) provide reproducibility of artifacts, and by keeping build and deployment scripts – as well as standard environment configurations – in source control (“Infrastructure as Code“) we can guarantee reproducibility of installs / instances of a release.

Measurability: The ability to determine the “state” of a release at any moment, either in development or in production. While a release is in development, it is important for all stakeholders to have a clear view of the progress being made and the “health” of a release, including things like: How many tickets are still open/in development/in testing? What is the test coverage? What are the results of the automated regression and performance testing and how do the results compare to previous runs? Once a release is live, it is our responsibility to monitor and measure its performance compared to previous releases and to remediate any unexpected behavior (if needed). Numerous tools exist to help with application performance monitoring, server-side resource monitoring, logging and parsing of errors, etc, but these tools are only helpful if 1.) they are measuring the right things, 2.) they have visibility (e.g. alerts/triggers set up, well-designed dashboards, people actually looking at them, etc.) and 3.) they are reliable (e.g. provisioned with enough resources, few numbers of false positives).

It is the Release Manager’s job to ensure the Traceability, Reproducibility and Measurability of software releases. Ideally this is done by implementing tooling and automation but in the worst case some of it must be done manually until the pain of NOT automating the task is far greater than the up-front cost of scripting it. Case in point: Currently at Jama the process of producing a Manifest Check (i.e. the document that proves that each ticket slated for the release has at least one git commit implementing it, as well as verifying that each git commit is implementing a ticket planned for the release) is manual and tedious, involving:

  • running a bash script to diff the commits in the current release from the last release,
  • parsing the commit messages for ticket numbers and loading those ticket numbers into a spreadsheet,
  • cross-checking the tickets in the spreadsheet with the tickets intended for release, as reported by our internal install of Jama,
  • working with Engineering and Product to resolve any discrepancies by either adding tickets to the release that were overlooked originally, or identifying which commits may have implemented code for multiple tickets.

As you can imagine, this process is time-intensive and non-scalable, since Jama already has multiple code repositories. As we plan to move towards a Service Oriented Architecture (e.g. “microservices“) the number of repos is expected to explode. Clearly the current manual process is no longer tenable. At a recent Jama Hackathon a team of developers and QA engineers developed a proof of concept service that will automate all of the tasks in the above list, and Product has added this work to the overall product backlog (to be prioritized against other strategic initiatives) as an add-on service for Jama.

What I love about Release Management at Jama is the diversity of responsibilities and technical challenges. It is fascinating to witness and assist Jama transform from a monolithic architecture to a service-oriented architecture, and ultimately support a more container-ized, continuous deployment paradigm for our Hosted releases. Additionally, I am learning an enormous amount about the state of the art in on-premises deployment technology – i.e. Replicated and Docker. As a Release Manager concerned with Traceability, I am fortunate to be able to use Jama to build Jama, since this is exactly what Jama was built to do! I work with people from across the organization daily as I perform general project management for releases, and I get to be a spokesperson for process improvements and CI optimization, helping to drive initiatives such as modernizing our binary repo and establishing and enforcing our git release branching strategy. We are also starting to implement slow rollouts of some of our features to small subsets of our customers, also known as “Canary Releases“, and we are pleased with the feedback and data we have been receiving about this effort.