Tag Archive for: Requirements & Requirements Management

Insurance Framework

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.”

Allison Roberts, President, Genesis Management Consulting

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


Read the official press release here:
Jama Software® Announces Insurance Framework to Simplify Insurance Product Development


What is DOORS


Aerospace & Defense

In this blog, we recap the “Launch Your Aerospace & Defense Product Development Processes with Jama Connect®” webinar.


In this webinar, we discuss exciting new features in our updated Jama Connect® for Aerospace & Defense framework. These updates include refreshed solutions for cybersecurity, the DoD Range Safety Requirements Library, and other libraries of standards.

Also, Cary Bryczek, Solutions Director for Aerospace & Defense at Jama Software®, shares best practices in the Jama Connect platform and demonstrates significant new features that can help you further enhance your aerospace and defense product development processes, including:

  • ARP 4761A – Guidelines and Methods for Conducting the Safety Assessment Process on Civil Airborne Systems and Equipment
  • DO-326A – Airworthiness Security Process Specification
  • US CFR Parts 21-57 Pre-imported Libraries and Usage
  • Defense MBSE and Digital Engineering Guidance
  • NASA and Air Force Range Safety Requirements
  • European Cooperate with Space Standards (ECSS) Pre-Imported Libraries

Below is an abbreviated transcript and a recording of our webinar.


Launch Your Aerospace & Defense Product Development Processes with Jama Connect®

Cary Bryczek: Let’s get started. So the Airborne Systems Solution. So when we say solution, it’s really a complete set of frameworks, example projects and the procedural documentation that goes along with that. It’s really intended to accelerate your implementation of Jama Connect, especially those that are developing Airborne Systems and the Airborne Systems components that are going to live on these aircraft. When you utilize these frameworks, you can either have zero set up time, so we’re developed the solution to align with the standards and you can also tailor it. So your consultant who does team with you could help you tailor it to meet your very specific business needs as well. So it’s really designed for any organization, whether you’re a startup in the Airborne Systems world or whether you’re a longtime developer of aircraft.

The Airborne Systems Solution is really designed to help you ease the path to regulatory compliance, to help the engineers produce the evidence and collect that evidence in coordination with the regulatory requirements and the industry standards that are used that are requiring the acceptable means of compliance. Today’s. In today’s world, there is a lot of new engineers that are being employed in Airborne Systems development. And really this particular template is helpful to them because it really gets them to understand “How am supposed to do development?” We all know that Airborne Systems development has the most onerous and rigorous standards of any industry. And teaching our new engineers is very time-consuming. So having this template with all of the guidance built into it and the procedure guide really helps our new engineers to get started.

So there’s three components to the Airborne Systems Solution that what we call the data set, a procedure guide, and the success program. The data set essentially is what you get when you install Jama and it has the templates, it has a ready to use configuration that matches those regulations. It has all of the item types, all of the reports, all of the best practices built right in. And then the procedure guides and the documentation of the reports essentially show you how the Airborne Systems template is meeting the industry standards. So how does it meet ARP4754, how do you use the solution to meet DO-178. That’s sort of a thing.


RELATED: Jama Software® Delivers Major Enhancements to the Jama Connect® for Airborne Systems Solution


Bryczek: And then we also pair our solution with specific consulting. So our consultants already are very familiar with the regulations with working with our customers that have been delivering and developing Airborne Systems already, as well as systems engineering best practices. Some of our customers have interesting supply chain needs. And so they might want to use an additional tool that we package called data exchange. That’s just an add-on to the solution.

So when we look at the framework itself, there are a lot of industry standards that we support. These industry standards are the acceptable means of compliance that the FAA and EASA recognize in order to meet type certifications. So we have those processes that come right out of those standards built right in to the framework. So that framework consists of specially configured item types, pick lists and views of that information. Our relationship rules are aligned to the types of trace matrices these particular standards are calling for. We have workflows and guidance for how you conduct reviews of information as well. We have the libraries of standards, so if you need to comply with the different CFR parts, we actually have those pre imported. This is something new that we’ve added and we’ll talk about that a little bit more. The framework includes these document export templates as well as risk templates and analysis templates and more.

Now this is a company with a procedure guide. So along with not only just the template itself in Jama, we give you the procedure guide. You can take this guide and tailor it to meet your specific needs as well. This procedures guide is updated. So as a subscriber to the Airborne Systems Solution, any updates we make or new releases like what we have right now is included with your subscription. It just makes it easy for everyone to kind of understand “How do I use Jama if I need to meet these industry standards?”


RELATED: Digital Engineering Between Government and Contractors


Bryczek: Also with this particular release is the configuration and update guide. So this is new this time around. This particular guide gives a very detailed description of the entire dataset. It includes all of the types that we’ve defined, all of the pick lists that are defined, all of the relationship rules, all of the workflows. So if you need to update from your existing Airborne Systems Solution and take in aspects of the new release, it makes it really easy for you guys to update as well. This might be something as well… So if you tailor from your existing Jama solution and you want to keep track of that, something like this might be a really great way for you to document your own implementation of Jama itself.

So exciting. This is one of the new things. So we have for cybersecurity, DO-326A is an acceptable means of compliance for doing security analyses. There are a significant number of new item types that have been added to the solution that comprise our cybersecurity solution as well as how do you really do the airworthiness security analysis. Essentially there are seven steps to do this particular type of analysis. This really starts with developing your PSecAC. And for those of you who are maybe new to Airborne Systems development or are not familiar with DO-326 or cybersecurity, it is a process that’s sort of done in tandem with both the system development and safety. But this is different in that this is analyzing the intentional unauthorized electronic interaction. So it’s really designed to find ways that hackers or bad actors might be accessing parts of the Airborne Systems that you don’t want them to.

To watch the entire webinar, visit
Launch Your Aerospace & Defense Product Development Processes with Jama Connect®


Finding Information

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 Consultant at 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.


RELATED: Jama Connect® vs. DOORS®: Filters, Search, and Analysis: A User Experience Roundtable Chat


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.


RELATED: How to Use Requirements Management as an Anchor to Establish Live Traceability in Systems Engineering


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.


RELATED: Jama Connect User Guide: Find Content


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



Total Cost of Ownership

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 MitchellSr Director, Global Business Consulting at Jama Software® – and Susan ManupelliSenior 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.


RELATED: Traceability Score™ – An Empirical Way to Reduce the Risk of Late Requirements


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.

Susan Manupelli: Yeah.


RELATED: Eight Ways Requirements Management Software Will Save You Significant Money


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.

Download our Jama Software® Data Model Diagnostic to learn more!


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.

To learn more about available features in Jama Connect, visit: Empower Your Team and Improve Your Requirements Management Process



Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

What is a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and How Does it Help with Complex Software Development?

What is a Scaled Agile Framework?

Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe for short, is a robust framework for managing significant software development projects. It provides guidance on how to organize tasks, manage risk, improve predictability, and maintain the benefits of Agile development.

The SAFe methodology can be used to organize and coordinate large-scale software development projects and is a comprehensive structure that provides guidelines for scaling Agile development methods — from modest, single-team projects to larger, multi-team ones.

SAFe offers a scalable and adaptable approach to task planning and management that reduces risk, boosts predictability, and takes advantage of Agile development’s benefits. The SAFe techniques, roles, and artifacts provide guidance on how to manage dependencies, align teams, and consistently deliver value while enabling teams to work together under a shared framework and language.

SAFe’s essential elements include:

  • Agile Teams: SAFe describes how Agile teams should function as well as the tasks and responsibilities of each team member.
  • Program Backlog: A prioritized list of work that serves as a guide for value delivery.
  • Program Increment: Refers to the time-boxed period of time where teams produce value.
  • Solution Train: The task of coming up with a solution falls under the purview of a multidisciplinary group known as the “Solution Train.”
  • Agile Release Trains (ARTs): A collection of Agile teams working together to create a solution.
  • Value Streams: A series of steps that the organization uses for delivering value to customers.
  • Program Increment (PI) Planning: A regularly scheduled, joint planning session that brings teams in the ART come together to organize and plan tasks, and align on vision, roadmap, and cross-team dependencies.

RELATED: The Easiest Ways to Reduce Product Development Expenses in 2023


What kinds of businesses employ a Scaled Agile Framework?

Organizations that create and deliver complex goods, such as software, often employ the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) — particularly in settings where there are many teams, large-scale projects, and numerous stakeholders. SAFe is especially helpful for enterprises that need to manage dependencies, coordinate work across various teams, and consistently deliver value. Organizations across a range of sectors, including technology, finance, healthcare, government, and more, use SAFe.

Due to the fact that SAFe offers a flexible and scalable approach to Agile development, it is employed by both large corporations and smaller companies. The framework is a popular option for firms looking for a complete approach to managing large-scale software development projects, since it can be customized to match the unique demands of each organization.

Do companies have access to software platforms and technologies that facilitate the use of a Scaled Agile Framework in development?

Yes, there are several software platforms and solutions that support Scaled Agile Framework development for businesses. These technologies offer support for a number of SAFe-related features, including as backlog management, value stream mapping, continuous delivery, Agile planning and tracking, and more.

Two popular platforms that support SAFe include:

  •  Jira Software: This popular Agile project management tool offers features like backlog management and Agile boards.
  • Azure DevOps (formerly Visual Studio Team Services): A Microsoft solution that offers support for Agile project management, continuous delivery, and more.

These are only a couple of the many tools that businesses using SAFe have access to. The best tool for a company depends on its individual requirements and preferences, and many companies decide to utilize a variety of tools to support various SAFe implementation components.


RELATED: Research Notes: Traceability Score™


How Can Jama Connect® Help Organizations Adopt a Scaled Agile Framework?

Jama Connect® is a product, systems, and software development platform that can help organizations adopt and implement a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), and provides support for various aspects of SAFe, including:

  • Requirements Management: Jama Connect provides a centralized repository for managing requirements and product backlogs, helping organizations align work with their product strategy and vision.
  • Traceability: Jama Connect manages requirements with Live Traceability™ across the end-to-end development process — from requirements to design and implementation — helping organizations manage dependencies and ensure that work is aligned with their goals.
  • Collaboration: Jama Connect provides a platform for teams to collaborate on product development, improving communication and reducing risk.
  • Quality Assurance: Jama Connect offers a platform for managing quality assurance operations, including as test case management, test execution, and defect tracking, to assist businesses make sure that their products fulfill consumer needs.
  • Reporting: Jama Connect offers analytics and reporting tools that help businesses assess their progress, spot potential dangers, and make wise decisions.

Jama Connect integrates with other tools like Jira and Azure DevOps to offer a complete SAFe solution for businesses. Additionally, due to the platform’s adaptability and configuration options, companies can tailor Jama Connect to their organization’s unique needs and operational procedures.

Jama Connect is the #1 Industry-leading software for requirements management and Live Traceability™. This robust, but easy-to-use platform enables collaboration, quality assurance, and reporting for enterprises looking to build a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and can help businesses boost productivity, generate better products more quickly, and optimize their product development processes.

In conclusion, large-scale software development projects can be managed and coordinated using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) approach. It is a thorough framework that offers instructions on how to scale Agile development processes from small, single-team projects to big, multi-team ones. While maintaining the advantages of Agile development, it offers a scalable and adaptable way to plan and manage work, lowering risk and raising predictability.

To learn how Jama Connect can help your organization adopt a Scaled Agile Framework, contact us to speak with one of our experts!


Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Karrie Sundbom and Josh Turpen.



requirements-driven testing

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 MaldariDirector of Solutions Architecture at Jama Software® – and Susan ManupelliSenior 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.


RELATED: Traceability Score™ – An Empirical Way to Reduce the Risk of Late Requirements


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?


RELATED: Telesat Evolves Engineering Requirements Management & Product Development


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.

Download our Jama Software® Data Model Diagnostic to learn more!


Thank you for watching our Episode 9, Jama Connect vs. IBM DOORS: Requirements Driven Testing. To watch other episodes in this series, click HERE.

To learn more about available features in Jama Connect, visit: Empower Your Team and Improve Your Requirements Management Process



Airborne Systems Solution

In this blog, we recap our press release, “Jama Software® Delivers Major Enhancements to the Jama Connect® for Airborne Systems Solution” – To read the entire thing, click HERE


Jama Software® Delivers Major Enhancements to the Jama Connect® for Airborne Systems Solution

Accelerate and optimize airborne systems development with a new set of supported frameworks, projects, and standards

Jama Software®, the industry-leading requirements management and traceability solution provider, has announced enhancements to its Jama Connect® for Airborne Systems solution. Jama Software is committed to continuously enhancing its industry solutions, enabling customers to easily manage requirements, achieve Live Traceability™ and accelerate systems development.

The Jama Connect for Airborne Systems Solution is a complete set of frameworks, example projects, and procedural documentation used to accelerate the implementation of Jama Connect for organizations developing airborne systems and components. This is the third major upgrade to the solution since 2019 and these new capabilities are available to existing and new customers alike. The update both refines the existing solution elements and expands the scope of the solution to meet airborne safety and cybersecurity standards ARP4761A and DO-326A respectively.

“Having all of the applicable 14 CFR regulations preloaded at the beginning of a new project greatly accelerates assigning the driving requirements without extensive data entry.”

Jeffrey Spitzer, Chief Engineer at Transcend Air

The newly upgraded Jama Connect for Airborne Systems provides the following benefits:

  • Reduced adoption time of new standards such as ARP4754A/DO-178C/DO-254/ARP4761A when developing complex airborne systems
  • Reduced deployment time and risk of negative outcomes with defined and justified configuration, export templates, and reports
  • Increased confidence and decrease time-to-value with an established scope and direct alignment of requirements for Airborne Systems

“Jama Software continues to lead with innovation and work alongside our customers to invest deeply and cater to the needs of the Aerospace and Defense (A&D) industry. The Jama Connect for Airborne Systems solution has enhanced support and provides a standards-compliant framework that can streamline compliance demonstration for aviation system development. This is a major milestone for us! And we are here to help our customers stay ahead of the rapidly changing Aviation industry.”

Cary Bryczek, Director of Aerospace and Defense Solutions at Jama Software

The Jama Connect for Airborne Systems Solution consists of multiple components that make up a ready- to-use configuration including:

  • Airborne Systems Dataset: Includes frameworks and sample sets aligned to ARP4754A, ARP4761A, DO-178C, DO-254, DO-326A along with US Code of Federal Regulations Airborne Systems Library (eCFR) – pre-imported Title 14, Subchapter C, Parts 21-59.
  • Procedure Documentation and Reports: The procedure documentation provides teams with straightforward processes that they can follow to make the best use of Jama Connect in compliance with the standards included in the dataset.
  • Data Exchange (Add-On): This utility allows the exchange of requirements, architecture, and tests across the supply change and between tools using the industry standard ReqIF format.
  • Success Program (Add-on): Includes an Aerospace and Defense Jama Consultant to optimize your Jama Connect configuration, teach best practices, and train your team.

“Jama Connect has enabled Ursa Major to document airborne systems requirements and track verification closure in a streamlined and organized way which has enhanced communication and success between our teams.”

Maggie Mueller, Systems Engineer at Ursa Major Technologies, Inc.

To learn more about Jama Connect for Airborne Systems Solution, please visit our
Aerospace and Defense page.
If you would like to speak with one of our industry experts and book a free Jama Connect trial click here.


Read the entire press release here!
Jama Software® Delivers Major Enhancements to the Jama Connect® for Airborne Systems Solution


product development

In this blog, we discuss and provide examples of the easiest ways to reduce product development expenses in 2023.


The Easiest Ways to Reduce Product Development Expenses in 2023

As we head into 2023, economists, business owners, and customers are all discussing economic uncertainty. A study published by Bloomberg last month polled 28 economists and found that 70% predict a recession in 2023, up from 65% in November and just 30% in June.

But it’s not all bad news. If you develop products, now is the perfect time to identify the hidden waste in product development so that you can fix it.

As you know, product development is complex and includes many processes and steps, some of which are riddled with inefficiencies, resulting in late product launches, costly rework, and potential compliance issues. If you can isolate and fix these issues, it’s much easier to position yourself for whatever curveballs 2023 throws your way.

The real cost of late product launches

Late product launches aren’t just frustrating; they’re expensive. Research shows that a product delay costs roughly 15%-35% of the product’s net present value, which adds up fast. Additionally, according to Gartner:

  • Nearly half of all product launches are delayed at least one month.
  • Products that do launch on time are more likely than delayed products to meet internal targets within one year.
  • Of the delayed launches, 20% fail to meet internal targets.

Late product launches are expensive, but why do they get delayed in the first place? The most common reasons, according to Gartner, include lack of a formal launch process, issues with product development (bugs, errors, and feature creep), failure to meet customer requirements, product quality issues, and more.

Behind the scenes, here are a few factors we see play into late product launches, expensive rework, and waste:

  • Loss of valuable engineering hours. Your engineers are valuable resources. So when they spend far too much time on tedious manual documentation across disparate documents and tools, it’s expensive. Fixing inefficient workflows can save upwards of 80% of previously lost time.
  • Disconnected cross-team collaboration. Disconnects across teams are one of the largest reasons for expensive waste. Recapturing this waste requires effective collaboration across the various stages of system development, from requirements to design, development, testing, and validation.
  • Difficulty producing documents to prove compliance. Proving compliance requires speedy action. Digging up documents is time-consuming and frustrating, and if you can’t find the necessary information, it can result in costly compliance issues.
  • Siloed tools and processes. Silos misalign teams and workflows and leave visibility gaps that can be linked to expensive rework and late product launches.
  • Lack of traceability. A lack of traceability can result in finding errors late in the process, costing as much as 100x more to resolve compared to the expenses incurred if those issues had been identified earlier.

Of course, this list only scratches the surface of the hidden waste in product development that leads to late launches and expensive rework. So how do you fix it?


RELATED: Reclaiming Productive Work Time – ROI Calculator


Reclaiming hidden product development waste

Recapturing costly waste requires an easy-to-deploy solution that solves the major issues sabotaging a successful launch. Modernized requirements management software is designed to fix the exact problems at the root of these challenges. The right tool can help:

  1. Recapture wasted employee time. Without a modern requirements management solution, your highly skilled — and highly paid — workers can spend up to 40% of their time on tedious, unproductive tasks. Examples include searching for siloed information in static documents; dealing with manual or duplicate data; working with old, outdated document versions; and more. Implementing a requirements management solution saves up to two hours of productive work time per day.
  2. Reduce expensive rework. Rework creates setbacks when it comes to getting your products launched on time. An advanced requirements management solution can reduce rework by 40%-60%.
  3. Speed up review cycles. Slow review times can quickly derail on-time launches. A requirements management tool helps streamline review processes, enabling stakeholders to stay focused on the most relevant information, track participant progress, visualize critical information, and more.
  4. Identify defects earlier. A defect spotted late in product development can quickly throw you off schedule. A modernized requirements management solution helps remedy some of the most common issues, such as low stakeholder participation in requirements definition and validation, poor visibility into requirements challenges, and low-impact analysis. Jama Connect, for example, can reduce the number of requirements-related defects by 25%-40%.
  5. Solve the disconnects that slow you down. Ineffective collaboration creates a higher risk for errors; however, requirements management solves this challenge. One of our clients noted its testing team improved collaborative communication by 50%.
  6. Improve success with Live Traceability™. Live Traceabilityhelps your engineers view the most up-to-date and complete upstream and downstream information on any requirement, regardless of the development stage. You can also use live traceability to manage engineering processes through data, viewing performance in real-time.

A requirements management tool helps solve many challenges that create expensive waste, which is vital at any time, but especially during economic uncertainty. That’s because it empowers you to get ahead of what’s next.


RELATED: Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Program Teaches Modern Software Engineering Using Jama Connect®


Staying a step ahead of economic uncertainty

We get it — you’re on the edge of a potential recession, and investing now feels like the opposite of “battening down the hatches” for an impending financial storm. But if you can factor in exactly how much you’re losing with late product launches and expensive reworks, you’ll quickly find that recapturing this waste is one of the best ways to prepare for the unknown.

Once you recapture these previously lost resources, you can leverage them in other business areas to secure a stronger competitive advantage in the market, improve agility, and reduce the risks associated with product defects or compliance issues. And these benefits will help you position yourself so you are stronger when you need to deal with whatever surprises the new year has in store.

Do you want to learn more about how a requirements management tool helps you prepare for an economic downturn? Download the eBook.



Research Note

In this blog, learn how a Traceability Score™ can act as an empirical way to reduce the risk of late requirements.

Traceability Score™ – An Empirical Way to Reduce the Risk of Late Requirements

Executive Summary

One of the main causes of rework, delays, and cost overruns in product development is the creation of new requirements late in the process. This is a well-known risk in product development, but what management practices can empirically be shown to reduce this known risk?

Using our proprietary database of metadata from over 50,000 complex product development projects, we were able to determine that the Traceability Score™ is an empirical method to reduce late requirements. In fact, teams that maintain a high Traceability Score reduce the burden late requirements have on their project by 67% compared to teams with low traceability scores.

  • With this knowledge, our recommendation is that practitioners measure and monitor the Traceability Score™ of their projects to resolve issues early and ensure that the risk of late requirements is kept to a minimum.

Dataset Background

Jama Software® has the world’s largest, live dataset of engineering process performance with over 50,000 engineering projects updated and growing continuously. Leveraging this dataset, it is now possible to determine empirically which management practices improve the performance of the product development process. To learn more about our benchmarking, please review our Traceability Benchmarking Report.

The Empirical Questions

In this analysis we will explore three key questions:

  1. What are late requirements?
  2. How do late requirements negatively impact projects?
  3. Does maintaining a high Traceability Score reduce the risk of late requirements?

What are late requirements?

For the purpose of this analysis, we define “late requirements” as those requirements created after the completion of a project’s requirement decomposition phase which we estimate as spanning the middle 50% of all requirement creation activity (creation and refinement). To illustrate what late requirements look like, we show two actual projects below with requirement activity plotted over time.

Requirement Creation Over Time

 

In the Timely Project, requirement creation occurs in a defined requirement decomposition phase to form a necessary and sufficient set of requirements, with very few requirements being added after the fact (e.g. in fig (a), only 1.3% of requirements created late). In the Late Project’, requirement creation bleeds into future phases of the project, leading to a significant amount of late requirements (e.g. in fig (b), 9.2% of requirements are created late).


RELATED: Requirements Traceability Benchmark


How do late requirements negatively impact projects?

We can measure the outsized burden late requirements have on project teams, which we have illustrated for our two projects below. We define late requirement burden as the total number of requirement activities (creation and refinement) attributed to late requirements as a percentage of all requirement activity.

Impact of Late Requirements on Project Team Activity Burden

In the Timely Project, minimal late requirements enable better forecasting of project completion, and limits the rework and cost brought on by late requirements (e.g. in fig (c), late requirements only create an additional 8% burden).

In the Late Project, the high volume of late requirements makes it much harder to forecast project completion as the scope of the project is constantly changing, and project teams need to accommodate the late requirements (e.g. in fig (d), late requirements contribute an additional 31% burden).

Unsurprisingly, this additional burden of late requirements has an impact during testing for requirement validation. In our actual project examples, the Late Project has a test failure rate over 3x that of the Timely Project.

percentage chart


RELATED: Unlocking The Power of Live Traceability with Jama Connect®


Does maintaining a high Traceability Score reduce the risk of late requirements?

A core theorem of Systems Engineering is that maintaining high requirement traceability from the start of a project reduces the risk of late requirements and negative product outcomes. With our project dataset we can now test this theorem empirically. We define traceability as a measure of a project’s ‘expected’ traceability that has actually been established and calculate the Traceability Score as follows:(1)

established over expected

For our example projects, the Timely Project achieved a Traceability Score over 6X that of the Late Project; suggesting that maintaining a high Traceability Score throughout the project reduces the risk of late requirements.

traceability chart

To further determine if Traceability Score correlates to late requirements, we divided our dataset of projects into quartiles based on their Traceability Scores (Quartile 1 = bottom 25% traceability score, Quartile 4 = top 25% traceability score) and then compared the distribution of ‘Late Requirements Burden’ across these quartile groups. What we found is that projects within the bottom traceability quartile had a median Late Requirements Burden 3x greater than those in the top traceability quartile. In other words, the evidence supports that projects managed with higher traceability generally experience less risk from late requirements.

Recommendation

Our analysis has shown that late requirements negatively impact projects and that managing projects through a Traceability Score is the only empirical way to reduce the risk of late requirements. Below you can see how one can measure the Traceability Score over time as a project progresses to ensure system engineering best practices are being followed. A low or falling Traceability Score can quickly identify areas to address to reduce the risk of late requirements.

Here you can see how managing the Traceability Score directly as the project is underway would have identified the risk early in the Late Project.

Benchmark Chart

To learn more about achieving Live Traceability™ on your projects, please reach out for a consultation.

Interested in learning more? Download the entire Research Notes: Traceability Score™ datasheet HERE.

 



Document View

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 Manager at 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.


RELATED: Jama Connect® Features in Five: Jama Connect Advisor™


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.


RELATED: Jama Connect®: Quick ROI Calculator


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.


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


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