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Editor’s Note: This post about moving beyond legacy systems for requirements management was originally published here on DevOps.com May 12, 2020, and was written by Josh Turpin, Chief Product Officer at Jama Software. We’re always proud to share great thought leadership and this informative post from one of our own is no exception!

Getting Past Legacy Software Pains in Requirements Management

If you feel like you have outgrown your requirements management (RM) software, you are far from alone. From complex systems, such as IBM Doors, to document-based tracking through Microsoft Office, legacy RM tools are having a hard time catching up to the innovation occurring in highly-regulated industries. As we see the line between hardware and software become increasingly blurred, development methodologies are evolving faster than ever before. Sometimes, these changes happen day-to-day or even hour-to-hour, making project traceability feel impossible.

No matter how complex the software or notable the reputation, RM providers don’t always deliver a system that matches the goals of teams that need to quickly adapt, innovate, and grow. This misalignment can create several pain points that interfere with productivity. While some can be attributed to shifts in the marketplace, others are directly rooted in the software tools you are using to meet compliance.

Here are some common snafus and how to work your way out of them.

Multiple Stakeholders, Multiple Problems

From avionics to automotive to Medtech, highly-regulated industries see many different stakeholders and players, and that is a good thing. In order to reach peak public and functional safety, it’s crucial to value the input of multiple roles and skillsets. But, what happens if one or some of these folks don’t know how to use your RM software? At best it’s a shame that they can provide their two cents and at worst this begins a recipe for compliance disaster. To sidestep this conundrum, opt for software that seamlessly flows with multiple roles. More so, make sure whatever software you choose integrates user-friendly traceability. It’s crucial that each and every individual on the project be able to see the progress made from beginning to end.

So, You Missed a Deadline…

It happens to the best of us. You were asked to provide feedback on a requirement and you missed your shot to chime in. Whether a colleague left a comment for you in a Word or Google Doc or shot over an email to glean your opinion, the mode of collaboration you have in place failed you. That’s right, this isn’t all your fault. Review processes are too complex these days and they require collaboration software that sets the intentions of the users clearly. This requires real-time editing and notifications to help keep you and your team on track. To prevent falling into this trap, look for an RM tool that prompts the next steps, and sends timely notifications with clear instructions. Conversations about “who dropped the ball” aren’t productive or fair, the RM software you integrate should fill this gap in human error.

You’ve Been Blocked

You are frantically trying to enter crucial data into the system but you are somehow locked out. You can’t get a hold of the person who manages access and you are beginning to feel frantic. This isn’t just frustrating for you, it also poses some substantial risks to the company. On top of losing a couple of hours trying to break into the system, this clunky process inevitably chips away at the desire to provide feedback with any regularity or confidence. This goes against the entire purpose of collecting data in the first place. To facilitate continuous growth and data collection, your RM tool should be open, accessible, and intuitive. Only then will you encourage the kind of constant input and collaboration from stakeholders that is necessary to keep up with breakneck innovation.

When an Upgrade Spells Doom

Back in the day, we all used to get skittish when an iPhone software upgrade notification popped up on our screen. Will I lose all my photos and contacts? What about all those passwords I saved to log-in to my favorite apps? With the advent of the Cloud, much of this fear has dissipated. When it comes to your RM software, your team shouldn’t be afraid to upgrade the system to fix issues, improve security, and access the latest features.

Yet, these systems are often so customized or patched-together that an upgrade could mean disaster. Because the products you are building change and improve over time, you should have an RM system that can adapt quickly. When it’s time to purchase legacy software, weigh the opportunity costs of investing in something so stale. Ultimately, is the pain of being locked-out or unsupported on various platforms worth the headache?

Pain points aside, we are living in an age that has bred the most disruptive and creative products to date. From ultra-fast and sleek electric cars to life-like prosthetics to self-piloted spaceships, we have some of the best and brightest minds toiling away on how to propel us into the future. At the same time, the regulatory environment has become even more stringent to meet both the demands of the marketplace and public safety. It is going to take synced and streamlined teams to decrease time-to-market and meet the ever-increasing demands of compliance. To pull this off, you need collaboration infrastructure in place that keeps your team organized and catches mistakes often missed by disconnected individuals.

If you’re interested in learning more about requirements management, we’ve compiled some great resources for you here.

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What Phases are Needed for Developing a Medical Device?

Developing a medical device is an inherently complex process, and one that’s becoming more complicated all the time. In addition to the increasingly stringent regulatory requirements that must be met for FDA approval and/or EU MDR compliance, medical device manufacturers must also navigate ongoing changes across the industry, including the rise of connected devices within the Internet of Things (IoT).

Making it all the way from initial device discovery and conceptualization through to FDA clearance and launch strategy requires a dedicated team, as well as a risk and requirements management strategy supported by modern tools. Without such solutions in place, the high costs and significant risks of developing a modern medical device become more challenging:

The average cost of development under the Food and Drug Administration’s Premarket Approval (PMA) program is $94 million. For the less strict 510(k) path, it’s still a considerable sum – $31 million.

Product recalls are more expensive. A McKinsey study estimated the cost of these events at as much as $600 million apiece. Indirect losses from reduced market cap and lost revenue can run into the billions of dollars.
Medical device security is also paramount in the age of the IoT. Internet connectivity can expose devices to cyberattacks and the healthcare industry is routinely among the most targeted sectors.

To fully account for the relevant challenges and also zero in on corresponding solutions, let’s look at the process a medical device must go through before it reaches patients.

The 5 phases of developing a medical device

Medical device development is a multi-phase process, typically with five main stages. A sample process – this one outlined by the FDA itself – proceeds as follows:

Phase 1: Device Discovery and Concept

There are several overarching questions to answer at this initial stage:

Is there an unmet need that a new device could potentially satisfy?
What risks would the device, if brought to market, pose to patients?
How might those risks translate into the device’s classification?
Can a proof of concept outline a workable path to regulatory approval?

The classification of the potential device, in particular, will greatly affect the product development process and necessary risk management procedures.

For example, Class I devices are subject only to general controls such as good manufacturing practices and recordkeeping requirements, while higher-risk Class II and Class III devices require additional special controls and PMA, respectively. Accordingly, risk management is more complex for Class II and Class III devices, plus the associated costs are higher.

Phase 2: Preclinical Research and Prototyping

At this point, the device isn’t suitable for human use yet, but it is ready for testing within controlled laboratory environments. Observing the prototype’s performance under these conditions provides some early insights on how it might be used by people, and into what specific risks might accompany it.

Phase 3: Pathway to Approval

The device’s classification/risk level will determine the subsequent steps.

A Class I device such as an oxygen mask has to comply only with general controls, and many devices in this low-risk class are exempt from any premarket submissions. Higher-risk Class II devices, such as pregnancy test kits, must adhere to special controls, like meeting device-specific performance criteria, on top of those general controls.

Non-exempt Class I and Class II devices require a 510(k) Premarket Notification proving “substantial equivalence” with a legally marketed device that isn’t subject to PMA. If such equivalence cannot be proven, the device is placed into Class III.

Class III devices – including those nonequivalents, along with devices that sustain or support life – require PMA, which is the most complex part of developing a medical device. Scientific evidence must be submitted showing that the device’s benefits outweigh its risks and that it will help a significant portion of the population.

Phase 4: Regulatory Review

Once a medical device company has sufficient data on how its device performs and the accompanying risks, it can apply for regulatory review. The exact process will vary by device classification/risk level.

PMA applications entail a thorough review of the laboratories and facilities for production for good manufacturing practices, and an evaluation of the results of related clinical and nonclinical studies. Other processes are simpler.

Phase 5: Post-Market Device Safety Monitoring

After the device reaches the market, it will be continually monitored for possible safety and performance issues. Regulatory bodies may inspect manufacturing facilities again, while consumers and medical professionals can report any observed issues through programs like MedWatch in the U.S. This would be the stage at which a recall would be initiated, if applicable.

Throughout all five phases, development teams will need to maintain many different documents, including design history files for each finished device. To ensure that their work stays on track and complies with key regulatory standards such as ISO 13485, ISO 1497, and EU MDR provisions, it makes sense to create a single source of truth that supports scalable, efficient requirements management.

Upgrading requirements management for modern medical device development

Providing a medical device’s compliance can be complex. Traditional document-driven models are not ideal for this purpose, either, as they can involve many discrete spreadsheets and other files that take a long time to retrieve, review, and organize. The inefficiency of these workflows also complicates the traceability of development activities back to requirements.

In contrast, a centralized platform, with all key information in one place, can provide clearer insight into design controls for device requirements and related risks. Teams can use Jama Connect to gain real-time visibility into how design inputs have been met and verified, providing necessary evidence from the design control process, for better-informed decision-making and a more streamlined overall development process.

Defects can also be identified earlier and more reliably, curbing the risk of noncompliance and recalls. To learn more about we can help support your medical device projects, get in touch with a Jama Connect expert today.

If you’d like to learn more about medical device development,
we’ve compiled some helpful resources all in one spot!
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This post is the second in a three-part series on traceability. If you missed the first one, you can catch up here: “Decision Accountability: Three Ways Traceability Evolved to Make Complex Decisions Possible.”

Product development process tools have evolved. They’ve had to. To keep up with the many dimensions of requirement, test, and risk information used to define modern software and hardware, all development artifacts must play nicely together, continuously and at scale.

Software trends in general leverage dense, dynamic, and interconnected information on demand – think everything from social networking to enterprise trend–analytics tools. Those capabilities prove hugely valuable when you must make complex product decisions effectively. We’ve only just started to see how requirements traceability tools use these new software abilities to benefit from the product development artifacts builders have been creating all along. But it’s enough so we can look at what’s happening now and plan ahead for the future.

1. Traceability visibility makes it easy to share changes with an entire team at once.

In 2020
Today, traceability works like a map; it’s not limited to a single table view. Maps exist to help you navigate to a destination. Similarly, traceability guides daily decisions that lead you to build a product close to your original vision (your destination). It’s a means to an end in that way — more like what we have on our phones, less like the paper maps of the past that become outdated when new construction changes the landscape. If your map constantly changed, you’d never see the whole picture. But if people ahead of you could update changes from a central location and share it with everybody, no one would feel lost.

Beyond
Less manual effort. Keeping the trace “map” up to date with as little manual effort as possible will be essential. Even if the ways people view traceability become more advanced, the work to create and maintain those views doesn’t have to increase.

Sample of a relationship diagram in Jama Connect.

2. Traceability links are built as you go, automatically.

In 2020
Major decision points, reviews, and approvals are certainly captured in final requirements documents and other artifacts. However, seeing those associated to requirements as you work is the next level of traceability. Traceability in context allows for faster and more informed decision making. These live references, not just names of items in documents, can exist across versions of items, across time.

Beyond
More nuance captured, related, and parsed for meaning. Improvements in software makes data gathering more precise, and increases the number of actions considered relevant, traceable information. Conversations, for example, are already relevant information to trace decisions to (both implicit and explicit decisions).

Easily view conversations in Jama Connect and see how decisions occurred in Review Center.

3. Traceability generates metadata for real-time product health and other signals.

In 2020
Today, users can expect to view traceability success, and not just in a “yes/no” or “covered/not-covered” summary report. The status of the connected items matters, as do open questions about those items, and insight into whether they have recently undergone changes. Information about the items themselves impact the meaning of traceability – it’s more than a line connecting things.

Beyond
More attributes can define or even predict a project’s success. The benefit of a data-rich, detailed record of dozens or hundreds of activities tied together to achieve a project goal makes it possible to understand the past with more context and less reliance on costly manual documentation or memory.

The traceability view in Jama Connect provides context so you can see what’s connected upstream and downstream.

4. Traceability powers meaningful accountability behavior so you can see interconnections as they happen.

In 2020
Whether someone is authoring, reviewing, signing off, or just reading artifacts or documents for context, visibility into all relevant, related data is expected. Ideally, that data is linked directly from where they’re working. The benefit of building artifact relationships throughout the development process is seeing these interconnections live, as things change, not just at milestones.

Beyond
Systems holding information relevant to the requirements driving products will start to feel even closer and more interconnected. Even through more dense integration and aligned processes, systems will still feel controlled and connected.

Review the activity stream in Jama Connect to see who’s done what on which items and understand how data permeates to all contexts.

5. Traceability shows the impact on people, not just work artifacts.

In 2020
At the end of the day, connecting items is about making sense of multiple people’s decisions to build and test something. Why did they follow that process? What factors led them to make the choices they made? Traceability has evolved to help find out whose work is related to yours as you go, continuously. In early traceability matrices there wasn’t necessarily room to include the dozens of columns you might find relevant later, like authors or commenters. Today, that’s no longer an issue. Traceability can appear in multiple views for multiple purposes, even if the ultimate end goal is an exported document proving you built and tested what you intended.

Beyond
Expansion of communication and quick, on-demand review ability for stakeholders impacted by changes. The ease of the review process will become an integral and more continuous part of the development processes, because of the ability to easily see who is impacted by changes. The availability of a full audit trail of participation makes the difference.

Easily see who’s connected to items in Jama Connect to gain more visibility into reviews.

Traceability promises efficiency throughout the 2020s.

Software has come a long way in taking primarily document-based requirements management and molding it to our modern work environment and habits. Product decisions were always multi-faceted, but today the interwoven nature of products adds a whole new challenge. Traceability offers a solution that help people manage those challenges and work efficiently.

Go deeper on the topic of traceability in our eBook, “The Jama Software Guide to Requirements Traceability.”

Last month 1,150 professionals registered for our Best Practices for Writing Requirements webinar — our biggest webinar audience ever. Effective requirements writing continues to gain momentum as an urgent topic among product development teams across all industries. We get why.

The impact of clear and effective communication among stakeholders reverberates throughout organizations, and can:

Improve the quality of the requirements process.
Reduce rework.
Foster a culture of transparency.
Enable employees to work faster without sacrificing quality.

These benefits validate strong requirements writing as a crucial building block for an efficient workflow, and every business should want to perfect the skill.

Clarity, from market need to detailed requirement.

You can have the best builders and greatest minds on your side. But as our Manager of Business Consulting Preston Mitchell explains in the webinar, poor requirements writing compromises team collaboration and trust, kills innovation, and ultimately results in a product that doesn’t do what you want it to do. It undermines your entire requirements management process.

There’s a lot of things around writing better requirements, it can be a great goal in and of itself. But it’s even better in that it leads to other efficiencies in your business. – Manager of Business Consulting Preston Mitchell

Preston breaks down the path from “need” to “requirement” into three parts: Understand the problem, define the requirement hierarchy, and improve requirement quality. Within each section, he identifies best practices that ensure you keep the market need — and user need — visible for your entire team and provides examples that show you how to do so. Watch the webinar now to see what you missed.

Top-of-mind questions answered — and new ones you never thought to ask.

How can you detect a poorly worded requirement?
What kinds of words add ambiguity to your requirements language?
What’s the difference between requirements and design specification?
What do you need to include when you write a strong, clearly defined problem statement?

In addition to best practices, Preston details how Jama Software can help improve your requirements authoring. There’s also a Q and A at the end, so you can hear specific, real-world examples from people want to apply great requirements writing to their business today.

Add these important writing practices to your skill set and refine your product development process. You can watch a recording of the webinar in our resources center right now.

Jama Software’s latest customer story shares the success of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (JLL), a global leader of real estate and investment management. As Marshall King, Senior Vice President of JLL’s IT Solutions explains, the company had a simple business goal: “To be the easiest company to work with … We want our customers to feel like there’s not a lot of barriers to working with JLL, and that we make it easy.”

Yet roadblocks continually appeared — usually in the form of 100-200-page requirements documents in Word format, all in need of review by 10+ stakeholders.

Plenty of companies can relate. But JLL routinely promises customers seamless implementation of best-in-class technologies. Burdensome documents combined with an inefficient, manual process that slowed progress and caused miscommunications undermined that promise.

Requirements management with easy accessibility and visibility.

Jama Connect helped JLL become the company they wanted to be for their customers. The Jama Connect integration for Jira in particular, made the biggest impact. It simplified the unwieldy, document-heavy requirements management process into consumable tasks, and increased their levels of visibility. With more clarity and less miscommunication, customer requests were completed correctly and efficiently. While Jama and Jira stay in sync, other Jama Connect features like the cloud-based platform, real-time accessibility, and Review Center addressed JLL’s other efficiency concerns. The Jama Professional Services Team also helped with implementation and training along the way. But King says his team didn’t have to rely too heavily on training.

“Jama Connect is really pretty easy to use and intuitive” he explains. “I don’t do very much training these days. Occasionally, I’ll have a team of people that ask me for some training, and it’s more almost just like tips and tricks.”

Global teams, global customers, always connected and communicating.

Jama Connect strengthens stakeholder accountability and collaboration when multiple projects happen internationally. Teams in different regions can break down requirements documents and provide accurate updates to customers in a central location. Everybody can see the actions logged and feedback provided.

“The Jama Connect process has been hugely successful and much more efficient and effective than our previous method,” King says. “It’s easier to consume information, and easier to think about the requirements at each step, too.”

Read the full customer story to learn more about how JLL used Jama Connect integration for Jira to improve project efficiency and effectiveness.

Product development is rapidly changing. In this era of constant market disruption, development teams are under unyielding pressure to improve quality and get products to market faster. To meet these quality demands and improve speed to market, development teams are focusing on improving one of the most vital steps in their process: requirements management.

But even with greater emphasis on requirements management, siloed teams that are using their own specialized tools can create confusion across the development cycle — and lead to waste and delays.

This post will walk through some of the issues modern development teams are facing and explore the solutions, but for the full breakdown, please check out our webinar, “When Jira and Confluence Are Not Enough: Optimizing Agile Requirements Management for Enterprise Software Development.”

Why Requirements Management?

Several key factors are leading the shift toward greater attention to requirements management:

Intelligent devices such as autonomous vehicles continue to disrupt the marketplace and create both software challenges and risks.
Devices connected to people are fueling the ongoing digital transformation, which leads development teams away from a document-based approach and toward more modern solutions. This move, if not properly thought through and executed, can result in disjointed and misaligned teams across the development lifecycle.
The trend toward more product development governance produces greater regulatory pressure.
The push for increased speed to market has led to a drive for process modernization and the adoption of Agile platforms such as Atlassian® Jira®.

But all of this change and modernization results in increased complexity. Complicated development cycles need automation and more modern tools. Work must be coordinated across hardware and Agile software teams using different tools and methodologies. Connected products introduce security risks, mandating increased due diligence across requirements, design, and testing. Faster iterations and evolving solutions make regulatory compliance more difficult and time consuming.

A recent study from Project Management Institute revealed that the second most common reason for product failure is poor requirements management. In addition, 51% of program funds are wasted due to poor requirements management.

Software development teams that want to remain competitive need to transform work processes and adopt new solutions. Jira, Confluence®, and other single-stack tools, while valuable, are often not enough to ensure compliance, quality, cost control, and speed to market in complex product development. Plus, teams also need robust requirements management solutions and integrations across the toolchain.

Learn how enterprise companies can remain competitive in a start-up market by scaling Agile practices across the organization in this blog post.

Integrating Best-of-Breed Solutions Across the Toolchain

For many years, having a single stack solution seemed like the best way forward for product development teams. Large corporations invested heavily in these single stacks, believing that with everything in one place, teams would have fewer silos and easier reporting. However, these single-stack solutions were never intended to serve all functions for all teams.

It’s important for teams to have access to the tools that best support their specific needs. Best-of-breed tools support distinctive and varied needs for specialization. Focusing on depth rather than breadth can help optimize key stages of software development and delivery, as well as unburden the single-stack tools. Investing heavily in one specialized tool means optimizing a key piece of the process of development.

However, problems arise when development teams can’t communicate across the toolchain. Teams end up duplicating work, wasting time, or focusing efforts in the wrong place.

A fragmented toolchain doesn’t need to cause waste, communication breakdowns, or confusion. Integrating the toolchain is key.

Connecting Jama Software to the Product Development Toolchain

The first step in improving the product development process is to take control of requirements management. Jama Connect makes it easy for teams to define, align, and execute on what they need to build, reducing lengthy time cycles, wasteful rework, and effort spent on proving compliance. Jama Software’s unique combination of core capabilities solves some of the most challenging issues modern product development teams face.

Jama Connect offers:

Live traceability
Ease of use
Change management across engineering teams
Robust collaboration and decision tracking
Streamlined compliance reporting
Test management

Jama Software provides a purpose-built, integrated solution designed to scale as your business grows. It’s a best-in-breed requirements management solution that allows teams to use the solutions and processes best suited for their jobs across the ALM ecosystem.

TaskTop Integration with Jama Connect

The second step in getting control of complex product development is integrating the toolchain. Through the extended solution with our integration partner TaskTop, product and engineering teams can connect product development through execution to ensure everyone is working off the most current requirements and stakeholders are aligned and engaged.

TaskTop allows all teams and silos to use the specialized tools that are necessary for their particular piece of product development. By integrating solutions across the toolchain, TaskTop automates communication and brings the work to the team in its own specialized tool.

Toolchain integration through TaskTop will:

Bridge silos
Eliminate duplicate data entry
Provide model-based integration

See how Jama Software’s integration solutions can help ensure traceability and alignment across the product development lifecycle.

A new era requires new tools and new processes. While Jira, Confluence, and other tools are highly effective in the right environment and for the right purpose, they aren’t always sufficient across the entire development cycle. Through robust requirements management with Jama Connect and toolchain integration with TaskTop, development teams can meet the demands of users, stakeholders, and the marketplace.

To learn more about how Jama and TaskTop can help your team meet market demands for complex product development, view our webinar “When Jira and Confluence Are Not Enough: Optimizing Agile Requirements Management for Enterprise Software Development.”

This post on innovation in automotive engineering is part of a series. You can find Part II on legacy software pains here, Part V on moving from DOORS to Jama Connect here, and Part VI on migration solutions here.

Few industries are as visibly affected by digital transformation as the automotive industry. Over a century ago, Henry Ford started to produce the production of the famous Model T and jump-started the success of the car as a consumer item. There has been lots of incremental innovation ever since, but nothing compared to what we are seeing today, like self-driving cars, over-the-air feature enablement, or transportation as a service.

Challenges for New and Established Organizations

It is unclear who is in a better position for exploiting the exciting opportunities in the automotive market. Established vendors have a solid, financially-strong foundation to operate from, combined with decades of experience in building cars. But this legacy is also slowing innovation down, as manufacturing processes and production lines are based on long development cycles. There are reasons for it: Existing automotive design processes evolved from a paper-based mindset, where every additional iteration in is expensive. Likewise, the production line was tuned for high throughput at low per-unit prices, but this makes changes very expensive.

New players in automotive engineering, on the other hand, are generally more agile and open. They can react faster and are willing to think outside the box. But their lack of experience can result in major issues with respect to compliance and production, creating expensive delays at late stages in development.

The First Generation of Requirements Management Tools

For decades, the automotive industry had recognized requirements as a key factor for success. The German automotive industry, in particular, started to introduce dedicated requirements tools in the ‘90s, and they encouraged their suppliers to do the same. Their solutions were establishing a new paradigm, using an item-based data model, rather than documents. This means that every requirement was an atomic item, with its own attributes, like priority and version history.

IBM® DOORS® (IBM Engineering Requirements Management – DOORS Family) was pioneering the idea of item-based requirements, and until the mid 2000s, there was really nothing like it available on the market. But by that time, some of the shortcomings of DOORS were becoming apparent. As a result, requirements specifications with tens of thousands unstructured requirements were not unusual, leading to redundancies and inconsistencies.

As a result, the first generation of requirements management tools were effective in helping the industry to scale. To a degree, they also helped in managing complexity. But they did not help in making the industry more innovative.

See how one Fortune 100 semiconductor company is managing the complexity of automotive development in our whitepaper. Read now.

Innovating with the Current Generation of Requirements Management Tools

Jama Connect™ was created to address the shortcomings of the first generation of requirements management tools. Specifically, Jama Connect was designed to solve the top challenges faced by regulated systems development teams. This fits the situation in the automotive industry today, and the following capabilities are key enablers for innovation:

Ease of Use – Requirements are used by everyone involved in automotive engineering. Not just the development team, but also engineering, quality, product marketing, sales, and leadership rely on requirements for an up-to-date product description. Good requirements also help departments make informed decisions. By contrast, first-generation tools were so hard to use that many important stakeholders refused to use them.

Single Source of Truth – Innovation requires trade-offs, which must be based on facts. It is crucial that facts — possibly derived from various sources — are instantly available. The first generation of tools typically only held a fraction of key data, and generating meaningful reports was a tedious, manual process.

Collaboration – Innovation requires heavy collaboration. First-generation tools did not have collaboration features, which meant that it took place outside the tool, i.e. via email or in meetings. But that creates a lot of friction and leads to situations where important information is missed. Modern solutions, by contrast, allow collaboration in context. This means that you have visibility into all relevant data and access to all relevant stakeholders while collaborating. And not just that…

Audit Trail – While first generation tools already had proper versioning, modern solutions go much further: For instance, the context-based collaboration leaves an audit trail in the tool (rather than in Outlook). This is crucial for efficient risk management and compliance. Developing new, innovative products typically results in much more activity. Context-based collaboration records decisions, issues, and answers exactly where you need them for compliance, and where you find them when you make reviews and trade-offs.

Learn how to avoid some of the biggest mistakes while developing automotive products for ISO 26262 compliance. Read the guide.

Managing Change – More than anything else, innovation requires the ability to react to change, no matter whether from the outside (new market needs) or inside (new technologies). The first generation of tools already acknowledged that by offering traceability-based functionality. But it was cumbersome to create and maintain the traceability, and many traceability-related issues were not apparent during day-to-day work but required running special reports. Modern solutions, by contrast, offer actionable traceability: Gaps in coverage or items that are marked as suspect due to change are visualized in many places, and allow fixing with a few clicks. This takes most of the friction out of the management of the traceability and allows for faster development iterations.

Reuse – Ironically, using what we already designed is an enabler for innovation. Without effective reuse, a lot of time and energy is wasted on re-designing what had already been designed and to re-test what had already been tested. It allows to focus our energy on the 20% that are truly new and truly innovative.

Integration – Last, the first generation of requirements tools created internal silos by making it very hard to get data in or out. Large vendors often offered half-hearted integration with their own software tools. While this was better than nothing, it often resulted in mediocre tool chains that were not based on need, but on availability. Jama Connect, by contrast, embraces openness by offering powerful interfaces that encourage integration with best-of-class tools.

Innovation in automotive engineering is only possible if all stakeholders can collaborate effectively, even in the context of very complex products, without being held back by the need to collect data from multiple places, or burdensome regulatory overhead. This is only possible with current generation requirements tools like Jama Connect.

*IBM® and DOORS® are registered trademarks of IBM Corporation.

Learn how the combination of Jama Connect and our Automotive Services tightens your development process by reading our datasheet.

This post is part of a series. You can find Part I modern alternatives to IBM DOORS® here, Part III on enabling innovation here, Part IV on the difficulties of compliance here, Part V on moving from DOORS to Jama Connect here, and Part VI on migration solutions here.

For decades, companies building highly regulated, technically complex products and systems have relied on legacy tools like IBM® DOORS® or even Microsoft® Office® for requirements management (RM).

As software becomes more prevalent in physical products and development methodologies evolve, legacy RM tools like these have struggled to keep up with the modern speed of capturing, sharing, and managing requirements.

See how Jama Connect stacks up to legacy software tools like IBM® DOORS® in our whitepaper.

Legacy tools are powerful, but even with their complex capabilities and reputation for stability, they don’t always match the goals of teams who need to adapt, innovate, and grow.

Noticing this misalignment can surface as painful moments — like when your team struggles to get work done. Sometimes those issues are process or market related, but in some cases they are actually because of the exact software tools you’re using to make your life easier with requirements management.Here are some critical signals that your team is no longer aligned with your legacy solution for requirements management, and how you might consider a change going forward.

Painful Moment 1: You value the input of multiple roles and skillsets, but you realize only a handful of people know how to use your RM tool (or worse, they’re not allowed into it).

Why It Matters: This is a signal that the RM tool was not set up with the whole team in mind. For companies innovating quickly, this lack of visibility into what you’re working on and why is a major risk. If it were possible for only a handful of people to build complex products, teams and companies wouldn’t have the diversity of skills and thought processes they do today.

What to Do: Consider a system that supports the workflow of multiple roles with advanced, user-friendly tools for different data types and views that still all roll up to the same goals. User-friendly traceability is essential.

Are you getting the most from your requirements management? Read our best practices guide.

Painful Moment 2: You miss the deadline for feedback on a requirement because the notification was unclear. Now you have to go outside the normal channels to have your input seen.

Why It Matters: This is an instance not always appreciated by those who wrote the processes. However, with legacy software that doesn’t make the intentions of users clear (such as wanting input by a specific date), it’s hard to avoid miscommunication and lost time.

What to Do: Look for RM tools that make the next action required of you clear and sends timely notifications with clear instructions.

Painful Moment 3: You try to enter data into the system, but it’s locked, archived, or somehow just not visible.

Your decision is blocked. The person you know who provides access and training is unavailable (for example, on vacation… or no longer at the company).

Why It Matters: Having company-mission critical software that only a handful of people understand and have access to is a huge risk for many reasons – some not as obvious. On the lower end of severity, you lose a few hours trying to access the right data. However, if the trend is that fewer people have permissions and training to use your RM tool, then you’re at risk of data being lost or your system eventually needing to be replaced entirely.

What to Do: Data can get richer over time; it doesn’t have to go stale. Invest in requirements management tools that support your team’s continuous growth and capture continuous input and collaboration.

Painful Moment 4: Your team wants to upgrade its legacy software to fix issues, improve security, and access the latest features. Unfortunately, it’s so customized and patched together that you can’t update without major consequences.

Why It Matters: The products you’re building change and improve over time. The software tools you use to get your work done every day need to keep up with you, at a pace that balances change with allowing users time to learn.

What to Do: Consider the risk and costs associated with stale software, and look for options that avoid getting you locked in to unsupported versions and brittle customizations.

There’s a lot of requirements management solutions on the market. Cut through the clutter with our buyer’s guide.

Painful Moment 5: You want to change the way your team uses the legacy software to match a new process, but there are no configuration experts available.

What if you break something? You hope you can create an experiment project on the side that will ultimately integrate back into the big picture, but it’s not clear how to create this outcome.

Why It Matters: If teams are struggling to get on the same page with their requirements management process, it’s a signal that whatever your building may have misalignments as well.

What to Do: Consider RM solutions that balance each team’s need for autonomy with the need for alignment. This can be supported by software that have services experts available to adapt the tools to your needs as you change, rather than one big rollout that attempts to predict the future.

It’s tough to have to work around legacy software to get your job done. It’s also expensive. Maybe you can’t change the RM tools you use on demand, but if you start to notice these painful patterns it becomes easier to build a business case for making a change that supports the whole company’s vision.

Learn the benefits of switching from legacy software tools for requirements management with our paper, “Jama Connect: A Modern Requirements Management Alternative to IBM DOORS.”

This post on modern alternatives to IBM DOORS® is part of a series. You can find Part II on legacy software pains here, Part III on enabling innovation here, Part IV on the difficulties of compliance here, Part V on moving from DOORS to Jama Connect here, and Part VI on migration solutions here.

Current market dynamics include disruptors that put innovation at the heart of your product development process. Organizations must be able to navigate these disruptions to remain competitive and sustain business growth.

Requirements management (RM) tools include many legacy options, such as Microsoft® Office® toolsets to software applications like IBM® DOORS®. These legacy solutions may have handled managing requirements in the past, but often fail to keep pace over time.

Today, we’re launching a new blog series, Legacy Sunset, featuring experts exploring topics relevant to legacy requirements management tools, why customers elect to move away from them, and what benefits are realized after making the switch.

In the coming posts we’ll also touch on how to navigate the data migration path from a legacy system to a new platform, and how innovation is realized in product development lifecycles with a modern requirements management solution.

As part of this series, we’ll evaluate legacy RM solutions like IBM DOORS, and cover:

Key reasons why customers are replacing these legacy solutions and which solutions they’re replacing them with
How compliance is impacted adversely using legacy requirements management solutions
How modern requirements management solutions are enabling innovation in the automotive, medical device, and aerospace industries
Why legacy requirements management tools do not adequately meet the needs of modern product development processes
Options to support migration and enable replacement of legacy solutions
How to deploy a co-exist strategy with IBM DOORS and connect to the supply chain using data exchange for Jama Connect™

Learn more about thoughtfully selecting the right requirements management solution by reading our guide.

Time for a Change

Those still entrenched in legacy software for product development may soon find time is not on their side. Oftentimes, legacy solutions are built on outdated architectures and contain bloated features with many customizations that may simply not support the needs of product development teams.

While these legacy requirements management tools still support critical product development processes and information that the business depends on, they may grow unstable over time and eventually introduce risk to the product development lifecycle. That complicates things further for organizations that must stay current with compliance regulations, while developing integrated, complex products that sustain business and maintain market relevance.

Learn how Alight Solutions transformed requirements management for its clients by downloading the case study.

Check back for future entries in this series. In the meantime, learn more about Jama Connect and how it can help you modernize your requirements management toolchain through ease of use, collaboration, traceability, and compliance. Our customers can also combine the power of Jama Connect with leading tools across the ALM-PLM landscape to support a powerful, integrated solution that manages requirements in support of complex product development.

See first-hand how Jama Connect can transform the way your work. Connect with an expert or test drive the Jama Connect solution.

As globally-distributed teams become the new normal in complex product development, promoting team collaboration and keeping remote staff members on the same page can be challenging. That’s especially true when it comes to ensuring the backbone of product development is correct: requirements.

As a multinational company providing IT and telecom services to the air transport industry, SITA (Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques) identified a need for a modern requirements management solution for its Border Management portfolio to help its distributed teams facilitate better team collaboration around requirements.

Read this brief to learn why Frost & Sullivan likes Jama Connect as a modern solution for risk management.

Ease of Use a Critical Factor for Global Team Collaboration

Founded in 1949 by 11 airlines that combined their communication networks to establish a cost-effective, shared infrastructure, SITA is the world’s leading specialist in air transport communications and information technology. And although the company is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the organization has nearly 5,000 employees across 197 countries.

With an extensive communications network that covers nearly 95% of international destinations, it was crucial that SITA find a requirements management platform that allowed its team to effectively communicate and collaborate across international borders – and to do so, it knew it needed a solution that was easy to use in order to promote high adoption rates. After a lengthy selection process, SITA decided that Jama Connect™ was best requirements management solution available.

Learn how better requirements management helps better facilitate the collaboration process by watching our webinar.

SITA Finds Ongoing Success with Jama Connect

Shortly after onboarding Jama Connect, the team overseeing SITA’s Border Management portfolio found that the platform provided increased opportunities for stakeholder collaboration. They were also delighted to see streamlined review processes for requirements and traceability throughout the development cycle.

After three successful years of using Jama Connect, SITA has found that the robust requirements management platform has given the team:

An efficient, easy way for cross-functional teams to review requirements
A centralized, accessible repository for all its requirements
End-to-end traceability for requirements

In addition to the great success SITA has already found with Jama Connect, the organization continues to find fresh ways of leveraging Jama Software to gain more value.

“With Jama Connect, as we find new areas of either functionality or internal process requirements, we update our requirements process accordingly and train the team and roll out new aspects of it,” said Alistair McBain, Senior Business Consultant at SITA.

Read the full case study to learn more about how SITA leveraged Jama Connect to align its remote teams and facilitating effective team collaboration around requirements.