Tag Archive for: Remote work

We’ve stayed in contact with our Jama Connect customers as they’ve transitioned to a remote work reality. Teams are working through a lot of changes as they manage new product timelines, supply chain disruption and new market demands. Through it all they continue to prioritize innovation and timelines.  

One common theme emerged among these teams: Productivity in remote work demands teams take time to evaluate how they can optimize the Jama Connect platform to work smarter. Areas of focus: Teams want to improve their process, help people become more efficient, and take advantage of all the platform’s capabilities. 

Here’s the breakdown.

 

1. Optimize the way you use Jama Connect to improve your process.

 

When you go remote, it’s easy to be tempted by the plethora of communication tools. They all have their time and place. But engineering teams require more focus and tighter alignment. Collaboration and communication tools built into the context of where the work is actually being done helps reduce confusion and minimize disruption. 

Jama Connect ensures decisions get made inside the process, not in silos. There’s not an email here, or a Slack communication there to explain what needs to happen next. Everyone stays on the same page—a crucial need when your teams are remote. You reduce the risk of building off the wrong information which can cause delays and rework. 

Learn more in Optimizing Your Product Development Process Through Team Collaboration: Strategies for Systems Engineers 


2. Check the way you use the technology in Jama Connect. 
 

When your teams work remotely, the ways you’re not using your technology to its fullest potential can become glaringly apparent. Every Jama Connect technology capability, even ones that aren’t about collaboration, take on greater importance.

Tightening product traceability is a best practice Jama Connect customers supporting remote teams recommend. The way companies do business is changing fast, and the ability to manage change is critical. When requirements traceability is carried out correctly, teams can accurately assess the impact of changes, track the full history of product development, keep everyone in sync, and consistently improve the quality of the products being built — in every project, and every release.

In Jama Connect you can extend traceability beyond the engineering processes to link development and test activities back to the business rationale. And, coverage analysis can help a team find gaps and understand positive and negative progress quickly. 

You can learn more in Five Tips for Requirements Traceability.  
 

 3. Educate your teams about the Jama Connect tools.

 

Now’s the time to take advantage of the full collaborative capabilities of the Jama Connect platform. Tools like Review Center make it easy for remote teams to work together.  

 In the Review Center, you can send items like systems specifications or test plans for an unlimited amount of reviews with as many contributors as you want, including engineers and testers. Everyone in that review receives an email notification and can approve, reject, and give feedback on every individual requirement or section of a document that needs review. You can keep track of who contributed, what their role is, how much time they’ve spent in the review, and their overall level of completion. 

Learn more about the Review Center in Best Practices for Jama Connect Review Center.

As countries begin to open up, we’ll be here to update you on ways to adjust your teams and workflows so you can maintain momentum. Check back often.

 

Get more help optimizing Jama Connect so you can improve efficiency and productivity for your remote teams. Learn about our Rapid Optimization Workshops, now available as a remote service.READ MORE

 

Remote collaboration is here to stay. Your remote engineering teams can adapt to the new reality without jeopardizing quality, efficiency, or product development timelines if they plan ahead. But first, they have to know what to look for.

Anticipate new challenges in remote collaboration.

Face-to-face, quickly assembled meetings and hallway chats aren’t options anymore. That matters when it’s time to make critical decisions. Suddenly, speed and consensus seem impossible, even though they’re crucial to your product development process.

Tools like Zoom, Slack, and shared docs can only help to a certain extent. They remain important communication tools for remote workers. But they can’t keep up with the communication demands for your virtual engineering teams building complex products.

Maintain alignment in team communication and collaboration.

Successful communication among remote engineering teams requires alignment.  Teams need to be able to define, review, and validate requirements in real-time to ensure the right team has the right information at the right time. Critical functionality of the product they’re working on could depend on it. 

Successful collaboration goes beyond a conversation or a simple text edit. It has to be structured, to:  

  • Focus on the product being built.
  • Include context to inform the conversations and decisions being made. 
  • Provide broad visibility into the development process to manage change. 

Four best practices to help engineering teams adapt to remote work.

All this is easier said than done, especially when remote collaboration wasn’t expected and hadn’t been part of a business’ regular product development process.  But Jama Connect customers who already support remote teams in their daily business shared their insights with us. We’ve collected them here to help you.

1. Establish a common definition of success.
Teams need alignment on what they’re building so they don’t waste time. Clarify expectations up front. What do the terms “define,” “build,” and “test” mean, for instance? What does success look like based on feedback loops such as customer interviews and design reviews?

2. Empower better decision making.
Ensure the whole team clearly understands the “why” at the beginning of a project. You’ll equip everyone with what they need to make better decisions. Good decisions require situational awareness, comprehension of impact, and a way to gather input from others – and these all start with the “why.” Clearly defined responsibilities empower those involved to initiate and resolve follow-up questions and issues.

3. Tighten up your traceability.
Certain industries need to demonstrate compliance with regulations. Traceability analysis proves your system holds up under regulatory demands and meets contractual terms. Coverage analysis tightens this process, and helps teams find gaps and understand positive and negative progress. Extend traceability beyond engineering processes to link development and test activities back to the business rationale. 

4. Collaborate with purpose.
Connect everyone on the team to relevant data that’s tied to the work. Don’t make decisions outside the process, such as in documents or emails. This can help speed the decision process, reduce costly rework, provide proof of critical decisions for compliance and ensure teams hit development timelines. 

Want more best practices and tips? Watch a recording of our webinar, “Ask Jama: Best Practices for Remote Collaboration with Jama Connect.”

We hope everybody’s staying safe and healthy during this challenging time. All of us at Jama Software work from home now, as you probably do, too. We’re receiving requests for best practices for remote work from customers, or those who’ve heard we offer solutions for distributed engineering teams. We want you to know we’re listening.

 For our customers: 

  • Our continued support. As our CEO Marc Osofsky said in his email March 18th, we’ll continue to provide you the support and responsiveness you expect. Please check your inboxes for the complete email.
  • A webinar to help you. We also hosted a customer webinar with tips and advice for getting the most from Jama Connect capabilities while you work remotely. You can watch a recording of “Ask Jama: Best Practices for Remote Collaboration with Jama Connect” anytime.
  • Reach out to your Account Manager for an assessment with one of our consultants to address your specific needs as you seek to increase adoption and virtual team productivity.

Not a customer, but need help in the new remote work reality?

 

Get to know us. Companies rely on Jama Software to align remote engineering teams and keep everybody on the same page. We provide structured collaboration solutions those teams can use to work together in real-time and maintain visibility throughout the development process. Learn more about us here.

Try a webinar about remote work for engineering teams. Watch our on-demand webinar “How to Realign Engineering Teams for Remote Work with Minimal Disruption,” hosted by Principal Solutions Architect Aaron Perillat. You can watch it here.

We’ll post more helpful information about how to work with remote teams, and share more insights from our experts here soon.