Tag Archive for: Requirements & Requirements Management Page 6
Tag Archive for: Requirements & Requirements Management
In this blog, we recap a section of our eBook, “The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability” – Click HERE to read it in its entirety.
The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect® Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability
To adapt to increasing industry challenges and complexities, innovative organizations are now requiring best-in-class software to scale development, reduce risk, save time, and ensure compliance to quality, safety, and security regulations.
As organizations strive to deliver innovative products while navigating regulatory requirements, the tools they use for requirements management and traceability can make or break their success. This eBook is designed to help you understand the critical differences between Jama Connect® and Codebeamer, two leading requirements management solutions, so you can make an informed decision.
The Requirements Sector
The landscape of requirements management has undergone significant transformation. Traditional tools (like IBM® DOORS®) which once dominated the market, are now considered outdated. These legacy systems often lack the flexibility, ease of use, and integration capabilities required by modern teams. As a result, organizations are turning to modern solutions like Jama Connect that are built to meet the needs of today’s dynamic development environments.
Why Jama Connect?
Jama Connect stands out as a leading requirements management solution because it is designed with the user in mind. Its modern, user-friendly interface, combined with powerful features like comprehensive traceability and real-time collaboration, ensures that teams can manage requirements and risks effectively throughout the product, systems, and software lifecycle. Jama Connect also emphasizes customer success, offering expert support and training to help teams maximize their investment. Ease of use, rapid deployment, pre-configured well-documented industry frameworks, and in-house subject matter experts provide the fastest time-to-value/ROI without sacrificing quality or safety.
The Clear Advantages of Jama Connect Over Codebeamer
If you’re comparing Jama Connect to Codebeamer, one thing is clear — Jama Connect is the only purpose-built requirements management platform that delivers Live TraceabilityTM which allows engineering and other teams to
quickly and easily access the latest and most complete information for any requirement, no matter the stage of development or tools used. This real-time capability boosts productivity by ensuring teams work with the latest data and reduces risks like delays and defects by finding issues early. In addition, Jama Connect accelerates your product, systems, and software development by managing user needs and product information across the end-to-end development lifecycle.
Only Jama Connect Delivers Live Traceability™ Across Best-of-Breed Tools
Other vendors lock you into inferior platforms. Only Jama Connect seamlessly integrates with your tools of choice across engineering teams. Only Jama Connect can manage the state of development across all integrated teams and tools. Jama Connect’s unique and industry-specific Traceability Information Models define the relationships and expected behavior across teams and tools.
Our customers consistently tell us that they chose Jama Connect over Codebeamer for the following reasons:
1. Ease of Use and High Adoptability
Jama Connect’s intuitive design and user-friendly interface make it easy for teams to adopt and use. Unlike Codebeamer, which can be complex and challenging for new users, Jama Connect ensures that teams can start managing requirements effectively with minimal training. Users insist on a requirements management and traceability solution that is easy to use so that both internal and external stakeholders can efficiently access, share, and review information in a single source of truth, increasing and speeding up the adoption across teams for a better ROI.
The ease-of-use is not only imperative for users but also for administrators. Jama Connect offers an intuitive and user-friendly administration interface that enables admins to adapt the tool to their organization’s needs without having to learn overcomplicated configuration settings and concepts.
2. Modern Integration and Collaboration Capabilities
Jama Connect provides comprehensive traceability and impact analysis, enabling teams to manage change effectively and reduce the risk of errors. The platform seamlessly integrates with other best-of-breed tools (including Jira and Azure DevOps) in the development ecosystem, ensuring that teams can work efficiently without having to change their other development tools. In contrast, Codebeamer focuses on working solely with other PTC tools and its own limited application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities.
Modern product and software development requires optimal real-time collaboration between stakeholders. Jama Connect provides an enhanced collaboration experience with its communication streams and advanced Review Center, enabling both internal and external stakeholders with the capabilities to perform formal and iterative reviews.
3. Intelligent Engineering Management
Jama Connect empowers Intelligent Engineering Management by addressing a critical challenge faced by engineering and product development organizations: the lack of real-time KPIs and metrics during development. This gap often leads to delays, budget overruns, and product defects or recalls. Jama Connect uniquely transforms traceability into a measurable instrument, enabling teams to track real-time metrics and KPIs throughout the product development process. By providing a comprehensive overview of project progress and aligning it with required processes, teams can identify gaps early, mitigate risks, and avoid missed requirements. With its Live Traceability™ and integrations with other best-in-breed engineering tools, Jama Connect ensures that both internal and external data are seamlessly managed, driving informed decision-making and on-time project delivery.
4. Strong Customer Support
We know that our customers need a support team that makes them a priority. That’s why Jama Connect offers unparalleled customer support (including 24/7 support for any production outages), with dedicated customer success teams that work closely with you to ensure you achieve your goals. In contrast, Codebeamer’s support can be limited, making it difficult for your teams to get the help they need when they need it.
5. Scalable and Flexible
Jama Connect is highly adaptable, making it suitable for a wide range of industries and project sizes. Whether your organization is in automotive, aerospace, medical devices, or another industry, Jama Connect can be tailored to meet your specific needs, often getting you up-and-running quickly with custombuilt data frameworks to satisfy your industries regulations and best practices. Additionally, the platform offers flexible deployment options, including cloud and self-hosted, giving you the freedom to choose the best setup for your organization.
6. Fastest Time to Market/ROI
Deploy Jama Connect’s easy-to-use interface in weeks, not months, with easy updates and high performance. Preconfigured frameworks are built-in to satisfy industry regulations and help teams ease the path to compliance, along with in-house industry focused subject-matter experts and exceptional customer support.
7. Lowest Total Cost of Ownership
With simple and straightforward administration and no need for custom scripting or continuous updating, Jama Connect has the lowest total cost of ownership in comparison to Codebeamer. Jama Connect scales easily without big infrastructure investment, and with unlimited no-cost access for extended internal/external stakeholders, all team members can be involved with additional costs.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/11/2024-10_codebeamer-compare-ebook-1-2.jpg512986Jama Software/media/jama-logo-primary.svgJama Software2024-11-12 03:00:182025-04-03 10:12:56The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect® Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability
In the world of automotive and semiconductors, where the pace of technological innovation seems to accelerate daily, staying ahead of trends is critical. That’s why we sat down with Neil Stroud, Jama Software’s industry expert with decades of experience spanning major players like Intel, Arm, and Samsung. Neil has been at the forefront of the functional safety and semiconductor evolution, witnessing firsthand the challenges and transformative changes that shape these industries.
In this exclusive interview, Neil shares his unique perspective on the latest industry dynamics, the impact of global supply constraints, and how the automotive industry’s strategic relationships with semiconductor vendors are evolving. He also discusses Jama Software’s role in helping both sectors address increasingly complex requirements and integration challenges, driving efficiency and reducing risk across the supply chain. Join us in exploring how Jama Connect empowers companies to manage complexity, enhance traceability, and accelerate their time to market.
Driving Innovation: Quarterly Automotive & Semiconductor Trends with Neil Stroud
Kenzie Jonsson: Thanks for sitting down with me today, Neil! I’d love it if you could spend a little bit of time telling us about your background and career path.
Neil Stroud: Prior to joining Jama Software back in April of this year, I’d spent most of my career in the semiconductor industry, working for companies like Samsung, NEC, and PMC-Sierra. I also spent 12 years with Intel, and then moved into the IP space with Arm who are one of the key players in semiconductor IP. Directly before joining Jama Software, I spent time with CoreAVI, a niche software company in the safety-critical graphics space. Almost twenty years of my career has been spent in the functional safety domain. It wasn’t by design; it was more by accident. I didn’t set out to get into that domain at all. It all came about through my time at Intel where I was calling on a big industrial automation company and they asked me the question, “Hey, so when are you going to start supporting functional safety with Intel architecture?”
Of course, at that point, I didn’t know what it was, what it meant, what it was all about. One thing led to another, and I stumbled into the world of functional safety and was given a great opportunity at Intel to go… I was going to say, go and lead it, but it was more me volunteering and saying, I think we should be doing this. And Intel the senior leadership at Intel saying, “Oh, go on then, go do it.” That’s exactly what I did. So, it was quite nice because you’re acting as a startup within the safety of a big corporation like Intel. At that point you start to look at the fundamentals – what does safety look like? What do we need to do as a company? How do we sell it? How do we make money out of it? What are the technical issues? What problems are the industry facing? That kind of stuff. So, I pretty much became a GM of my own startup at that point, which was a great experience.
That was back in the day when complex semiconductor functional safety wasn’t really a thing. So, we were blazing the trail, not just for Intel but for the whole industry. So, little did I know back then where it would lead. It’s been so much fun. That’s also what took me to Arm – to drive the whole functional safety strategy across their ecosystem. So, all of that obviously led me into adjacent businesses especially automotive, as safety is of paramount importance where I worked with the big OEMs and throughout the supply chain. Now here I am at Jama Software bringing all of that experience of semiconductor, automotive, and software and apply that into the requirements management tools domain to drive our presence and growth in the automotive and semiconductor segments.
Jonsson: What changes have you been part of at Jama Software recently to help us better meet the needs of our customers?
Stroud: It’s a really interesting time to join Jama Software. Obviously, we’ve been successful as a company over the preceding years. I’m amazed by the number of different market segments that are using Jama Connect. There are some obvious ones like automotive, semiconductor, medical, consumer electronics, and aerospace and defense. But there are some emerging segments as well, which is great to see, like insurance companies and state departments and beyond. Clearly, Jama Connect is a tool that transcends verticals. But of course, we need to be able to tweak and tailor that to accommodate the unique needs of each market segment. Functional safety and cybersecurity are great examples of these differences. That’s what’s exciting as part of the change with Francisco Partners acquiring us back in April for $1.2 billion. That to me is a leading indicator that they’re betting on us to continue growing and we are investing heavily to continue to delight our current customers and of course help new customers achieve new levels of innovation. Placing that bet is exciting for all of us at the company. As a result, one of the changes we made at that time was to really double down on the vertical focus. So, bringing in an organizational structure that allows us to do and in turn drive even more alignment with the needs of each market segment.
It’s good for us. But more importantly, it’s good for the customers because we can talk in their language, we can better understand their problems, and of course we can partner with them to solve their problems. And that in turn means tailoring our product to better suit their needs. So, it’s a win-win. It’s a confirmation of the importance of those verticals to Jama Software and sends a clear message to that we are listening and here to partner with them on their growth journey. So, it’s exciting for me and I see that excitement across the whole company.
Jonsson: Can you tell us what you’re seeing in the industry with the conversations that you’re having with our customers and prospects?
Stroud: Well, I cover both automotive and semiconductor industries. There’s obviously a lot of overlap between the two, and I think that’s an increasing trend we’ve seen over the last few years. The automotive guys have been building a lot more of a strategic relationship with the semiconductor vendors. Not least because when the supply constraints kicked in a couple of years ago, production lines were coming to a halt because they couldn’t get hold of the smallest, tiniest, cheapest components. And at that point, it is interesting how it created a real forcing function. The automotive segment said at that point, “Right, we aren’t going to get burnt again.”
So, they did one or two things. Some went out and tried to tie down the semiconductor vendors contractually to say, “Look, in the event that this happens again,..” and it will happen again because the semiconductor industry tends to work on about a seven-year cycle of oversupply versus constraint, “we want to guarantee our component supply.” The car OEMs and tier-one suppliers obviously didn’t want to get caught in that again. I don’t have visibility into how successful those discussions were, but I don’t think it will necessarily prevent a recurrence. The good news is that there is huge investment going into building new fabs that will provide significant capacity increases in the coming years.
The other interesting dynamic that happened was some of the auto guys said, “Well, screw that. We’re going to do our own silicon.” It sounds easy when you say it quickly, but there’s an awful lot to it when you commit to that solution. Questions like, “Okay, so how are you going to do that?”, “Are we going to go and engage with a design house or we’re going to hire a team of semiconductor design engineers,” “Which fab supplier will we use?” “Will they guarantee supply?”
It’s not a trivial undertaking and to make it work from an ROI perspective it’s probably a ten-year journey. And in the meantime, you’ve still got to work with what you’ve got. The other issue is once you get down that path, you are committed and it’s an expensive commitment to make. The downside is you don’t get the benefit of volume that the big guys like Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, or NVIDIA can offer you. They build millions and millions of chips and can amortize the cost across many customers and markets. If you’re building your own, you don’t get that advantage, but you mostly own your own destiny. So, pros and cons.
So that’s one dynamic. I think the other dynamic we’ve seen in automotive generally over the last five years is a repositioning of what’s important. If we go back, even just five years, we all thought we would be driving autonomous vehicles right now. There’d be mass deployment. You and I would both have one on the drive. Of course, that hasn’t happened because we all realized how difficult it is. I think we were in denial for a while, but that forced us to pivot to solving the software defined vehicle challenge. If we can get that taken care of, then that kind of leads us to the autonomous world anyway. And we can solve it in bite-sized chunks. So thankfully the automotive industry and the semiconductor industry, and probably lots of other industries now are focused on a software-defined vehicle as an intermediate step.
Solving this challenge doesn’t just apply to road vehicles. I think when you look at industrial automation, that’s the same. Do they want to get full autonomy? Of course they do. Is it a challenge? Yeah, it is. So, software-defined has a role to play there. Same in A&D, same in a lot of the other verticals. So, there are a lot of synergies between the verticals as well. That created, I think, clarity, but it also created a seismic shift for the car OEMs in that the OEMs themselves, and I’m talking more about the incumbent suppliers, the big guys like VW, Mercedes, Ford, GM and others. History shows they’re so used to being completely in charge of their own destiny – when you need something, you just put a team together and you go build it. Those days are gone. You look at complexity in a modern vehicle, whether it’s the hardware or the software, you just can’t do that these days. It’s not scalable.
So, you have to rely on the supply chain to drive the innovation and deliver those pieces, those elements, and then you as the OEM have to integrate them. But that’s not a world they’re used to. And it obviously introduces a whole world of complexity.
Stroud: That’s another area where using Jama Software really pays dividends to ensure the whole supply chain is seamlessly connected from a requirements perspective resulting in faster design and delivery across multiple vendors and a better-quality product overall. A modern vehicle can have upwards of 100 million lines of code going into a modern high-end vehicle and this is increasing exponentially. Those software elements are coming from a hundred different vendors. Some of those are safety-related, and some of those are security-related. All of a sudden as an OEM, I’m responsible for integrating all of that, checking it works together, checking it’s still safe, checking it’s still secure, and then rolling it out through the door for consumers to go and purchase a new vehicle.
At the same time, vehicle suppliers can use this new SDV approach to drive new business models that allow post-sales upgrades and updates. If a car doesn’t have a feature on the day of sale, in a year’s time the owner could say, “Hmm, it’d be nice to have that new feature.” You log into your account, put your credit card details in, and as if by magic, the new feature arrives over the air to your vehicle the next day. That’s a whole new world and we are only scratching the surface today.
So, I guess the punchline is from our perspective, and doing what we do, it’s all about efficient requirements management and traceability. This applies not just to the OEMs, but throughout the supply chain as well, to ensure the elements from those hundreds of different vendors all come together. Those requirements have got to be exquisitely accurate and all the independent interdependencies mapped out correctly to be sure that you’re not violating a safety goal or creating a bug in the system.
This way you get into traceability… How well is my project going? How healthy is it? How many of those requirements are covered right now and tested and using that capability to reduce the number of recalls, drive efficiency in the design team, reduce the risk, all those good things. Of course, this level of detail isn’t just important to the engineering teams. It can also be rolled out to senior management who are likely more interested in risk, cost, time-to-market and so on.
So, the market’s really coming to us. Jama Software is now the largest supplier of requirement management solutions overall, which we’re immensely proud of. But we have to learn from the market and our customers how Jama Connect changes grows and morphs as a solution to enable that ubiquitous risk reduction and efficiency improvement. So, there are some big factors at play.
We’ve done very well in the semiconductor space overall, but it still frightens me to see how many spreadsheets are used to manage the business in the big semiconductor companies. And that’s speaking from experience because I lived in that world for a long time. There are way too many spreadsheets out there for doing requirements tracking. When you’re working that way, there’s no single source of truth and that will get you into trouble, guaranteed. It will cost you big with bugs in the silicon. So, it’s imperative to partner with the semiconductor industry and really drive change, accelerate innovation and solve tomorrow’s supply constraints. That’s on the chip design side, but also more recently, we’ve got the CHIPS Act, which is kick-starting a massive investment in the semiconductor industry to drive fab capacity to meet the huge growth in demand for chips.
So, we see the big players such as Intel, Samsung, and TSMC, all investing billions and billions of dollars to put fabs into place to meet this growth in demand and technology, which is exciting. The challenges are different to the auto market but guess what, these chip manufacturers need robust requirements management to run their business. And again, a lot of it’s been running on spreadsheets for a long time.
Now, we’re seeing, of course, headwinds in both industries. We still see that with EV vendors on the automotive side. We see even today challenges in the semiconductor industry with some consolidation of cost and trying to get costs under control. Jama Software has a critical role to play in that transformation. We can help drive efficiency and shorten cycles and time-to-revenue. All those things play into huge cost reductions for all. We are using our expertise in both product and deployment to educate and drive incremental success for our customers.
Kenzie Jonsson: Thank you for your time today, Neil! I really enjoyed this conversation, and I look forward to catching up with you next quarter!
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/11/2024-10-3-driving-innovation-neil-stroud-1.jpg512986Neil Stroud/media/jama-logo-primary.svgNeil Stroud2024-11-06 03:00:512024-11-06 09:38:21Driving Innovation: Quarterly Automotive & Semiconductor Trends with Neil Stroud
Jama Connect® Features in Five: Jama Connect Advisor™
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, will introduce viewers to Jama Connect Advisor™, Jama Connect’s natural language processing (NLP) tool, designed to improve requirement quality.
In this video, learn how Jama Connect Advisor enhances your product management by:
Reducing authoring errors
Increasing clarity
Optimizing foundational product needs and requirements managed in Jama Connect Cloud
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Katie Huckett: Hi. I’m Katie Huckett, Senior Product Manager at Jama Software. In this video, I’ll introduce you to Jama Connect Advisor, an add-on to Jama Connect Cloud that uses engineering-based natural language processing to optimize requirements authoring. It helps you write effective, well-organized requirements with speed and accuracy.
We’ll explore how Jama Connect Advisor can enhance your product development by reducing errors, increasing clarity, and optimizing the foundational requirements managed within Jama Connect Cloud. Jama Connect Advisor is designed to help teams author complex requirements quickly and accurately using AI and engineering-focused natural language processing. It minimizes disruption to engineering workflows while improving quality. How does it work?
Jama Connect Advisor applies the globally recognized INCOSE requirements rules and EARS syntax patterns. Even experienced engineers find it challenging to follow all forty INCOSE rules and six EARS patterns while writing even a single requirement.
That’s where Jama Connect Advisor steps in to streamline the process and enhance productivity. Now I’d like to show you a demonstration of how Jama Connect Advisor enables teams to intelligently improve requirements quality and usability, minimize requirement ambiguity and contradictions, which are the source of seventy to eighty-five percent of rework, and save time authoring, reviewing, analyzing, and updating requirement statements.
Huckett: There are a few different ways that you can use Jama Connect Advisor within the Jama Connect Cloud application.
Let’s start by adding a new requirement. Once you’ve added your requirement into the description field, you’ll notice the highlighted text to analyze the prompt underneath the description field. Once you’re ready, go ahead and select the text that you’d like to analyze and select analyze selection.
Underneath the description field, you’ll see a quick summary of your INCOSE score as well as any errors found, if any. You can move on at this point and save your item, or you can go ahead and view the details if you’d like to make changes at this point. So I can see on the slide over panel, the text that’s been analyzed, what my INCOSE score is, eighty-seven percent, and then the different identifiers that I’ve flagged it for the INCOSE rules. Underneath, you’ll see the EARS errors, if any were found. You’ll also see some information about the EARS notation pattern that your requirement might align with. I’m gonna go ahead and save this item, and I’ll wait to make my changes in a moment.
Now that I’ve saved that, let’s say I want to analyze a whole group of existing requirements. I’m going to go ahead and analyze all items within my set on the side here. So I’ll select all items and you’ll notice the batch analyze button, appears in the top right-hand corner. Once you select that, you’ll be given a summary view of what will be analyzed. So you can see I’ve got seventeen items selected here. All seventeen of those items happen to have a Jama Connect Advisor-enabled field on it, and then we have thirty-four fields per, these items. So it appears we have two Jama Connect Advisor enabled fields, per each item within this group.
Once you select analyze, the slide of our panel will pop up on the right-hand side. You’ll notice your group of requirements. Each item is listed at the top within this drop-down. You can navigate with the drop-down or the directional arrows. And then underneath, we also have a field drop-down. So as I mentioned, we have two fields per item type on this particular example. So I can swap between those as well either using the drop down or the directional arrows to move through.
So now that I’ve come in here and I see the, recommendations, I’d like to go in and edit my item to make some changes. So here, I want to remove some of the items that were flagged. I’m gonna remove this and just update this to say, you know, users can create a login using we don’t wanna use pronouns, per that flag. So I’m gonna change this to using an Apple ID, email.
Huckett: I’m gonna update this to be an actual logical condition with or social media. And then I’m gonna remove the example of LinkedIn because I don’t necessarily need that, and I’ll just update that to end the sentence there. Once I’ve made my changes, I can select the text again in the edit quick edit mode, analyze the selection, and I can see here my INCOSE rule score is now a hundred percent. I still have to deal with my ears errors, but so far so good on INCOSE.
I can view my details again in the slide-over panel and update here. I can also close that back out, and I can return to my batch analysis results by selecting the latest analysis link at the top, and that will take me right back in where I was before I made those changes. Now I can go ahead and save my item and complete those changes going forward. If I want to work through these requirements across multiple sessions or maybe I just wanna have a benchmark of what my score was before I started making my edits, you can then generate a report within the slide-over panel.
That will open up in your reports history page where you can download the report into Excel.
Once you open the report that was generated, we have a few different tabs you can work through in the worksheet. The first one just gives you some general information. What’s the average score of your requirements, the minimum, and maximum score, your total number of valid requirements, and then if you did have any invalid requirements as well. The file analysis reports, tab will give you a complete breakdown of all the requirements that were analyzed, their score, and then any corresponding INCOSE flags that may have popped up within the analysis.
We also have an explanation of each INCOSE flag as long as with their associated description. And then if your, report did happen to include any invalid requirements for any reason, those will be included in their separate sheet as well. Thank you for watching this demonstration of Jama Connect Advisor. If you would like to learn more about how Jamala Connect can optimize your product development process, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com
If you are already a Jama Connect customer and would like more information about Jama Connect Advisor, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Jama Software Consultant.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2022/11/FIF-Req-Advisor-5in5-intro-22.jpg10801920Katie Huckett/media/jama-logo-primary.svgKatie Huckett2024-11-01 03:00:132024-11-05 09:13:20Jama Connect® Features in Five: Jama Connect Advisor™
Tackling Industrial Manufacturing’s Biggest Challenges: Solutions That Work
Industrial manufacturing is undergoing a transformation driven by technology, market demands, and a rapidly evolving workforce. However, this evolution brings its own set of challenges that manufacturers must navigate to remain competitive. Below, we’ll explore the top challenges in industrial manufacturing and offer practical solutions to address them.
1. Supply Chain Disruptions
The Challenge: Global events like the pandemic and geopolitical tensions have exposed the vulnerabilities of supply chains. Material shortages, delays, and fluctuating costs have become routine, making it difficult for manufacturers to meet production targets.
The Solution:
Diversified Sourcing: Manufacturers should explore multiple suppliers, ideally in different regions, to reduce the impact of disruptions in one area.
Advanced Analytics and Forecasting: By leveraging data analytics, manufacturers can predict potential disruptions and adjust procurement strategies to maintain inventory levels.
Digital Supply Chain Management: Implementing technology like real-time tracking and automated inventory management systems ensures better visibility and responsiveness across the supply chain.
2. Talent Shortage and Skills Gap
The Challenge: As industrial processes become more automated and technical, there’s a growing need for skilled labor, particularly in areas like robotics, data analytics, and equipment maintenance. However, the industry faces a shortage of qualified workers due to retirements and a lack of interest from younger generations.
The Solution:
Reskilling and Upskilling Programs: Companies can invest in training programs for existing employees, focusing on emerging technologies and technical expertise.
Collaboration with Educational Institutions: Partnering with local schools and universities to create apprenticeship programs and internships can help build a pipeline of future talent.
Adoption of Automation: Automating repetitive or dangerous tasks can offset the impact of labor shortages while enhancing operational efficiency.
The Challenge: Industry 4.0 technologies, including IoT, AI, and machine learning, offer vast opportunities for improving manufacturing processes. However, integrating these technologies can be expensive and complex, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Solution:
Start Small, Scale Gradually: Manufacturers should begin by digitizing a single aspect of their production (e.g., predictive maintenance) and expand as they see ROI.
Cloud-Based Solutions: Cloud platforms offer scalable, cost-effective ways to implement Industry 4.0 tools without a significant upfront investment in infrastructure.
Cross-Department Collaboration: Ensure alignment between IT, engineering, and operations teams to facilitate seamless integration and minimize disruptions during implementation.
4. Meeting Sustainability Goals
The Challenge: Governments and consumers are increasingly demanding sustainable practices from manufacturers. This includes reducing emissions, minimizing waste, and adopting environmentally friendly materials. However, transitioning to green manufacturing can be costly and complex.
The Solution:
Energy Efficiency Audits: Conduct regular audits to identify areas where energy consumption can be reduced, whether through upgrading equipment or adopting renewable energy sources.
Circular Economy Practices: Embrace recycling and remanufacturing to minimize waste, both in production and post-consumer use of products.
Collaboration with Stakeholders: Partner with suppliers and customers to promote sustainable practices across the entire value chain.
5. Cybersecurity Risks
The Challenge: With the growing adoption of digital technologies comes an increased risk of cyberattacks. These attacks can disrupt production, compromise sensitive data, and damage a manufacturer’s reputation.
The Solution:
Regular Security Audits: Conduct frequent assessments of your digital infrastructure to identify and address vulnerabilities.
Employee Training: Train staff on cybersecurity best practices, particularly in recognizing phishing attacks and securing devices.
Robust Incident Response Plans: Develop and test response plans to minimize downtime in case of a cyberattack, ensuring quick recovery and damage mitigation.
The Challenge: Manufacturers are under pressure to produce more custom products, reduce lead times, and improve quality—all while maintaining efficiency. Meeting these demands often strains existing processes and resources.
The Solution:
Lean Manufacturing: Implement lean principles to eliminate waste in production and streamline processes, improving both speed and efficiency.
Automation and Robotics: Invest in robotic process automation to handle repetitive tasks, reducing human error and speeding up production.
Flexible Manufacturing Systems: Adopt systems that can easily switch between different product types, accommodating the increasing demand for customization without sacrificing efficiency.
Conclusion
Industrial manufacturing is facing unprecedented challenges, but with the right strategies and technology, companies can navigate these obstacles and position themselves for long-term success. From investing in workforce development to embracing digital transformation, the solutions are within reach. By proactively addressing these challenges, manufacturers can enhance their competitive edge in an increasingly dynamic market.
Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Steven Meadows and Kenzie Jonsson.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/10/2024-10-24-tackling-industrial-manufacturing-challenges-1.jpg512986McKenzie Jonsson/media/jama-logo-primary.svgMcKenzie Jonsson2024-10-24 03:00:092024-10-15 13:24:13Tackling Industrial Manufacturing’s Biggest Challenges: Solutions That Work
In this blog, we will preview a section from our video, “Expert Perspectives: A Conversation About Variant and Configuration Management in Software Defined Vehicle Development” – Click HERE to watch it in its entirety.
Expert Perspectives: A Conversation About Variant and Configuration Management in Software Defined Vehicle Development
Welcome to our Expert Perspectives Series, where we showcase insights from leading experts in complex product, systems, and software development. Covering industries from medical devices to aerospace and defense, we feature thought leaders who are shaping the future of their fields.
We are excited to introduce Florian Rohde, an expert in electrification, variant management, software defined vehicles, continuous integration and validation, and AI in automotive development. With more than 20 years of experience in the automotive industry, Florian has worked with companies large and small, from Siemens to NIO to Tesla Motors.
In this episode, we discuss:
Challenges in software defined vehicle development
Variant and configuration management in SVDs – and which companies are excelling
Balancing documentation, complexity, and speed
Below is a preview of our interview. Click HERE to watch it in its entirety.
The following is an abbreviated transcript of our webinar.
Kenzie Jonsson: Welcome to our Expert Perspectives series where we showcase insights from leading experts in complex product systems and software development, covering industries from medical device to aerospace and defense. We feature thought leaders who are shaping the future in their fields. I’m Kenzie, your host, and today I’m excited to welcome Florian Rohde, an expert in electrification, variant management, software-defined vehicles, continuous integration and validation, and AI in the automotive industry. With more than 20 years of experience in the automotive industry, Florian has worked with companies small and large, from Siemens to NIO, to Tesla Motors. Without further ado, I’d like to welcome Florian Rohde, who will be speaking with Matt Mickle, Jama Software’s very own director of automotive and semiconductor solutions.
Matt Mickle: Thanks, Kenzie. So my name is Matt Mickle. I run our solution development for automotive and semiconductor at Jama Connect. I’ve been with the company at Jama for about 11 years and worked as a consultant for most of that time. And now my team handles most of the consulting and development of solutions for automotive and semiconductor. And I live out in Europe, in Amsterdam. Came over here to help start up our European headquarters. And I’m joined today by Florian Rohde
Florian Rohde: Absolutely. Thanks, Matt. So I’m in the automotive industry for about 20 years. I started as an intern at Bosch, and then I started as a junior test engineer at a company called Siemens VDO, which then was incorporated into Continental. Back in the day, we were building electric power steering systems. So highly safety critical components in your car. So I got grounded into functional safety right from the beginning. I spent about seven, eight years at that company, both in Germany and in Romania. And then in 2012, I joined a startup called Tesla Motors, and that is bringing the interesting parts to our discussions here, I guess.
So in 2012, Tesla had about 2,000 employees worldwide. I was the first member and the founder of a team for vehicle software validation. So every software release, every software functionality on the vehicle level went through my signature for about six years. I counted over 700 releases in that time to the end customer and way more software that went through our test systems in that time. And after six years there at Tesla, I was one year at NIO as a director of integration of smart components. And starting 2019, actually, I became a consultant advisor all around SDV, software-defined vehicles, and basically trying to facilitate the communication between what you can call the old world and the new world. So the new players on the market and established 100-year-old OEMs because I speak both languages. I’ve been in both worlds. So I’m helping both sides, helping the new players really to understand regulatory things and scaling and things like that and helping the established players really to understand the role of software in today’s and tomorrow’s vehicles.
Mickle: Well, I know that when we started to talk about having this chat, one of the things that you’d mentioned is that you’re hearing quite often in the industry about challenges, especially as people are trying to shift into this modern way of working with software-defined vehicles. There’s still a lot of challenges around variant handling and configuration management. You have some strong background in handling some of those things, especially while you worked at Tesla. How would you say that your approach had to change when you started to think in a more software-defined vehicles perspective when it comes to variant management?
Rohde: Yeah. I think in general, there’s a lot of challenges. Variant management is one of them. But I think let’s focus on that for the purpose of this talk. Let’s not focus on engineering culture or software skill sets and so on. That’s, for sure, other topics we can talk about. But today, let’s talk about variant management, configuration management, etc. So on one hand, I see gigantic numbers of configurations out there when you look at legacy OEMs. And somebody told me just Ford F-150 numbers, they were like hundreds of thousands or even higher than that. So on one hand, you see the companies struggling with the variety of variants actually of their product. But then on the other hand, you also see R&D teams struggling with those variants, both in how to handle them on the development side of things, but even more so on the testing side of things, especially… So I’m a test engineer, originally. And for test engineers, additional variants are usually a nightmare because it just means basically one-on-one growth of your testing efforts.
So there is a problem that needs to be solved and it’s on two sides. It’s one, how do you solve that problem in your product itself? And the other thing is, how do you solve that problem in your tool chain? So things like what you’re doing on the requirement side of things, specification, and so on. Let’s look at the product for now. So Tesla had a different approach to this problem. They actually made themselves agnostic to the variety of variants. What does that mean? That means they developed their product software first and they were designing the software in a way that it can handle pretty much an endless amount of variance. Of course, and we can talk about that, there’s challenges to the validation of things. There’s challenges to how you handle software updates. There’s challenges how you handle releases. But we had a pretty good process in place to do so. But the alpha and omega of the whole thing is that there’s a system in place that allows the software to handle the variance without being handcuffed to some process from the past.
Mickle: Okay. So a lot of the challenges that I hear, and maybe some of what you hear, is especially around the alignment of the software with the hardware in terms of releases, considering those are evolving at different paces. So since the software is evolving so fast and handling multiple configurations, how do you account for that with what you’re doing with either tooling or the product?
Rohde: Right. So I think there’s a consensus in industry by now that the hardware has to be able to accommodate new software features over time. Or in other words, it has to be designed for a little more than it originally offers at start of production. There’s still a lot of hesitance around legacy carmakers because it’s a financial discussion, right? So I don’t think from technical point of view, anybody would disagree that the hardware should be overdesigned by, let’s say, 20% so the software can start evolving over time and creating new cool stuff. But it’s always a question how you actually finance that.
The good news here is that actually, hardware and compute power becomes more reasonable in pricing. So we’re not talking about dollars per bytes in memory anymore. We started talking about dollars per gigabytes, right? So we can actually make that happen a little easier. But obviously, there’s a strong legacy of hardware driving the timelines, and then the software goes on the hardware to make the functionality work as designed and then go into the car as a component. So now in the next generation of cars, you hear a lot the term of decoupling. So you’re decoupling software from hardware. What does that actually mean? That means that on the technical side of things, you have to find ways to have your software actually handling the car’s compute resource and not as a conglomerate of several separate ECUs. So we’re talking about zonal architecture at one point in the future, we’re talking about high compute power architecture, HPCs.
But on the other hand, it also means organizationally and structurally. So when I go back and look at the Tesla example, Tesla has one software that runs on all their cars. And the cars are, for sure, not all the same hardware. As a matter of fact, I like to sparkle that in here right now because a lot of people think Tesla holds the variance low, but that’s not the case. Yes, they have only four or five models in the field, five actually by now. But they actually perform some sort of a facelift statistically every week. So while in a traditional car-making you wait for about three to four years before you put in a flurry of hardware changes, and in between, the car stays more or less unchanged. What we experience at Tesla is that every week, there’s some new hardware going into the car. So there’s some new costs down available. There’s something better available. There’s some replacement parts available. It goes in right next week. And that means that you have thousands and thousands of different variants of Teslas driving out there, even though from the outside, they all look the same.
So what we did is we decoupled the software in a way that it’s “smart enough” to handle all these variants. So the way that works is there’s a package and that package of software contains all different options and variants, and it also contains the information who is allowed to play with who, so what variant is allowed to play with what variant of the other car component and so on based on our validation and release process.
But in general, in a very simplified way, the car knows what it is, and that’s already a huge difference to a lot of legacy carmakers. So the car has a digital information about its components in hardware and in software and in mechanics. And based on that information, it receives the software package and it builds its own personalized update out of that. And it’s talking to the components and updates the components with the right versions based on the information it has. This information is on the other hand also mirrored up into what they call the mothership, so the server area. So that information is available in real-time, and I’d like to talk about that a little bit because I think it’s extremely valuable, for example, for the validation and release process to set your priorities.
So let’s say I only have time to do one combination. So I would like to reach most people with my release today. Of course, I’ll do the next combination tomorrow and the day after. But today, I have only time for one and I want to reach the most people. So I can go and I can actually look what combinations are out there that are relevant for this release and I can prioritize my validation on that. Actually, at one point, we went so far that we even took time zones into consideration that we say, “We can validate all of this large area of the fleet, but hey, that will be midnight or 1 AM by the time they get it. So they will not install it for another eight hours or something like this. So let’s focus somewhere else.” So all this information is making it extremely powerful to manage your priorities and both in research… Sorry. And both in development and in validation.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/10/Florian-SDV-IDW-5.jpg10801920Florian Rohde/media/jama-logo-primary.svgFlorian Rohde2024-10-23 03:00:332024-10-18 14:35:54Expert Perspectives: A Conversation About Variant and Configuration Management in Software Defined Vehicle Development
Jama Connect is Once Again Named by G2 as the Overall Leader for Requirements Management Software
We’re excited to announce that Jama Connect has once again been recognized as the overall leader in the G2 Grid Report for Requirements Management Software for Fall 2024! G2’s rankings are based on verified user reviews and data gathered from across the web, analyzed through their proprietary v3.0 algorithm. The Fall 2024 G2 Grid Report reflects results calculated through August 27, 2024, showcasing the best in the field.
In addition to being named the top choice for requirements management, Jama Connect earned several prestigious accolades spanning all business size and multiple geographies for Fall 2024, including:
Overall Leader
Momentum Leader
Small-Business Leader
Mid-Market Leader
Enterprise Leader
EMEA Leader
Europe Leader
Learn more about the Fall 2024 G2 Grid for top Requirements Management Software products: DOWNLOAD IT HERE
This recognition highlights the exceptional value we bring to customers transitioning from document-based approaches for managing complex product, systems, and software development. We are deeply grateful to our users for their trust and for sharing their open and honest feedback on our product, services, and support.
Customer Feedback Highlights
“Product Design teams need a requirements management tool like Jama [Connect]. Using Jama Connect allows our software development team to have a well-organized and well-written set of requirements. It allows us to more easily maintain a baseline of features in our continuously evolving software.” — Mark M., Mid-Market – G2.com
“Jama [Connect] is not only a ‘document oriented’ ALM tool, it gives the organization the ability to map the project structure the product structure making it an easy entry point for R&D folks. Configured properly, it is a real technical and regulatory ‘single source of truth.” — Frederic Fiquet, Director, Systems Engineering – G2.com
We are committed to providing the best possible experience for our users, and being named the overall leader by G2 is a testament to the success and satisfaction our customers have found with Jama Connect.
From all of us at Jama Software, thank you!
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/10/2024-10-17_g2-leader-fall-2024-1-2.jpg5121024Jama Software/media/jama-logo-primary.svgJama Software2024-10-17 03:00:532024-10-11 12:37:31Jama Connect® is Once Again Named by G2® as the Overall Leader for Requirements Management Software
Quality Management System Regulation: Final Rule Amending the Quality System Regulation – Frequently Asked Questions
Update: August 7, 2024
The revised part 820 is now titled the Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR). When referring to the rule that is currently effective, the FDA uses the term “Quality System (QS) Regulation” or “QS regulation.” Because both the QMSR and the QS regulation are located in part 820, wherever possible, the FDA has used the terms “QS regulation” and “QMSR.”
Listed are resources pertaining to the Quality Management System Regulation requirements and resources for implementing a quality management system:
On January 31, 2024, the FDA issued a final rule amending the device current good manufacturing practice (CGMP) requirements of the Quality System (QS) Regulation under 21 CFR 820 to align more closely with the international consensus standard for Quality Management Systems for medical devices used by many other regulatory authorities around the world.
This rule amends 21 CFR 820 by incorporating by reference the quality management system requirements of the international standard specific for medical device quality management systems set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO 13485:2016. The FDA has determined that the requirements in ISO 13485 are, when taken in totality, substantially similar to the requirements of the QS regulation, providing a similar level of assurance in a firm’s quality management system and ability to consistently manufacture devices that are safe and effective and otherwise in compliance with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act).
The rule amends the title of the regulation and establishes additional requirements that clarify certain expectations and certain concepts used in ISO 13485. These additions ensure that the incorporation by reference of ISO 13485 does not create inconsistencies with other applicable FDA requirements. This revised part 820 is referred to as the Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR). The FDA has made conforming edits to part 4 (21 CFR part 4) to clarify the device Quality Management System (QMS) requirements for combination products. These edits do not impact the CGMP requirements for combination products.
This action continues the FDA’s efforts to align its regulatory framework with that used by other regulatory authorities to promote consistency in the regulation of devices and provide timelier introduction of safe, effective, high-quality devices for patients.
This section provides answers to frequently asked questions related to the final rule. These questions and answers provide clarity and do not introduce any new policies or modify any existing policies.
A: The FDA is focused on advancing and continually improving the quality, safety, and effectiveness of medical devices to meet patient needs. This action, if finalized, will harmonize key areas of a device manufacturer’s Quality Management System and will more closely align the United States with many other regulatory authorities around the world.
Q: What is the FDA doing to prepare for harmonization of the Quality System regulation with ISO 13485?
A: The FDA intends to engage in a variety of implementation activities including, updating information technology systems, training FDA staff responsible for assessing compliance with medical device quality management system requirements, developing an inspection process, revising relevant regulations and other documents impacted by this rulemaking, and communicating and educating stakeholders, including affected FDA staff, on the change.
Q: What training will FDA staff do?
A: FDA staff will be trained on the final rule, the revised inspection process and changes to associated policies and procedures. Additionally, broader Quality Management System trainings have been, and will continue to be, deployed within the FDA to familiarize affected staff with quality management system concepts and requirements.
Q: How will this rule impact FDA staff and programs?
A: FDA will continue to conduct its operations to protect public health, including inspections, incorporating the requirements of the rule. The greatest impact will likely be to internal trainings, which will be needed to familiarize staff with the new regulation as well as any updates to procedures, processes, and policies as a result of the change.
Q: Will there be a new inspection process?
A: FDA will develop a new inspection process to align with the requirements of the new Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR). The process will be developed for implementation when the rule takes effect (i.e., two years from publication).
Q. Now that FDA has incorporated ISO 13485:2016, what happens if the standard is revised?
A: Any future revisions to this standard would need to be evaluated to determine the impact of the changes and whether the QMSR should be amended. If needed, amendments to the QMSR will be implemented through rulemaking.
Q. When will the new regulation be effective?
A: The rule is effective two years after publication in the Federal Register. Until then manufacturers are required to comply with the QS regulation. The FDA will begin to enforce the QMSR requirements upon the effective date, February 2, 2026.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/10/spotlight-ad-6.jpg5121024Jama Software/media/jama-logo-primary.svgJama Software2024-10-08 03:00:542024-10-07 12:16:25Quality Management System Regulation: Final Rule Amending the Quality System Regulation – Frequently Asked Questions
Jama Connect and CATIA: Traceable MBSE™ Integration through Cameo DataHub
For teams taking a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach to systems development, managing complexity and ensuring traceability are crucial. Jama Software’s integration with CATIA Magic, powered by Cameo DataHub, offers a streamlined solution collaboration between requirements, architectures, and mission needs. This integration bridges the gap between Jama Connect and CATIA’s tools, allowing teams to enable a federated data architecture approach and equip stakeholders with a deeper understanding of the system model.
As a leader in MBSE solutions, CATIA Magic supports SysML standards. Its commitment to following these standards allows for seamless customization to industry-specific needs, making it a powerful choice for complex system engineering projects.
Integration Benefits
This integration enables real-time synchronization of any Jama Connect data or model element with CATIA Magic, ensuring that teams can collaborate effectively while maintaining traceability across both tools. This connection simplifies complex workflows and enhances the accuracy of a system model’s requirements and architecture, eliminating manual work and reducing errors.
By supporting custom data mappings, bidirectional synchronization, and standard authentication methods, this integration empowers system engineers to trace changes, visualize updates, and maintain alignment across their tools — ensuring not only more informed decision making but also an increased confidence in the system design, and a more efficient engineering process.
Capabilities from a dedicated requirements management tool such as Jama Connect have built-in collaboration, configuration management, baselines, managing traceability across multiple levels of objects, managing the verification and validation activities, controlling access and change to objects using role-based permissions, and showing real-time workflow states at the object level. Jama Connect’s built-in workflow engine and dashboards give any stakeholder a 1000-foot view, a measurable view of status and progress, and exceptions to the defined systems engineering process.
Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Cary Bryczek, Matt Macias, Kenzie Jonsson, and Decoteau Wilkerson.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/09/2024-9-24-jama-connect-with-catia-via-cameo-datahub.png512986Jama Software/media/jama-logo-primary.svgJama Software2024-09-24 03:00:492024-10-04 10:06:18Jama Connect® and CATIA: Traceable MBSE™ Integration through Cameo DataHub
Conquering the Top Test Management Challenges in Product, Systems, and Software Development
Effective test management is essential to deliver high-quality products, systems, and software on time and within budget. As development projects grow in complexity, managing the testing process becomes increasingly challenging. From coordinating teams to handling intricate data, test management can become a daunting task.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the top test management challenges and provide actionable strategies to conquer them.
1. Coordinating Cross-Functional Teams
The Challenge: One of the biggest challenges in test management is coordinating cross-functional teams. In modern development environments, testing often involves collaboration between developers, QA engineers, product managers, and sometimes even external stakeholders. Miscommunication or lack of alignment among these groups can lead to delays, errors, and ultimately, a product that doesn’t meet customer expectations.
The Solution: To overcome this challenge, establish clear communication channels and define roles and responsibilities early in the project. Implement regular stand-ups and meetings to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Additionally, using collaboration tools like Jira, Confluence, or Slack can streamline communication and keep everyone aligned. It’s also essential to foster a culture of collaboration where feedback is encouraged and acted upon.
“Jama Connect® covers all the needs regarding requirements management. If anyone requires a tool for requirements, tests, and traceability, Jama Connect is perfect for it.” – Software Test Manager,Software Test Manager, Industrial Conglomerates Company
2. Managing Test Data
The Challenge: Managing test data, particularly in complex systems or software development, is another significant challenge. Test data must be relevant, up-to-date, and secure, especially when dealing with sensitive information. Inadequate test data can lead to incomplete testing, which increases the risk of bugs and compromised quality in the final product.
The Solution: Invest in test data management tools – like TestRail – that allow you to create, maintain, and secure test data effectively. Mask sensitive information to comply with data protection regulations and ensure that test data is regularly updated to reflect real-world scenarios. Automating the generation and management of test data can also save time and reduce the potential for human error.
The Challenge: In today’s fast-paced development environments, especially with the adoption of Agile and DevOps methodologies, testing teams often struggle to keep up with rapid development cycles. Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices demand that testing be both thorough and fast, which can be a difficult balance to achieve.
The Solution: Automate as much of the testing process as possible. Automated testing tools can run tests quickly and consistently, allowing your team to keep pace with rapid development cycles. Prioritize test cases based on risk and impact to ensure that the most critical areas are tested first. Integrating automated tests into your CI/CD pipeline will help catch issues early, reducing the need for last-minute fixes.
“If working in Aerospace / Avionics engineering, Jama Connect is a solid option to handle requirements, elements of detailed design and Test artifacts. It also enhances cross-team collaboration through the Review Center, the Stream feature.” – Arthur Bouisson,Process Engineer, RUAG Real Estate
4. Handling Complex Test Environments
The Challenge: Test environments are often complex, involving multiple systems, configurations, and platforms. Setting up and maintaining these environments can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Moreover, inconsistent test environments can lead to false positives or missed defects.
The Solution: Leverage virtualization and containerization technologies, such as Docker or Kubernetes, to create consistent and reproducible test environments. These technologies allow you to simulate various environments and configurations with ease, ensuring that tests are conducted in conditions that closely mirror production. Additionally, maintain a detailed configuration management process to document and track changes in test environments.
5. Ensuring Comprehensive Test Coverage
The Challenge: Achieving comprehensive test coverage is a constant challenge. With the increasing complexity of products and software, it’s easy to overlook certain areas, leading to gaps in testing that could result in critical defects.
The Solution: Adopt a risk-based testing approach. Focus on areas of the product that are most critical or most likely to fail, and ensure these areas receive the most attention. Use code coverage tools to identify untested parts of your codebase and supplement manual testing with automated tests to expand coverage. Regularly review and update your test cases to reflect changes in the product or system.
“We know Jama Connect has improved our test coverage (>15%) and allowed for faster more comprehensive reviews. Interestingly, these reviews have found bugs or issues that were not uncovered by traditional directed and random testing.” – Jama Administation,Jama Administation, Internet Software & Services Company
6. Managing Test Automation Effectively
The Challenge: While test automation is a powerful tool for improving efficiency and coverage, managing it effectively presents its own set of challenges. Common issues include maintaining the test scripts, dealing with flaky tests, and ensuring that automation delivers the expected return on investment.
The Solution: Focus on building robust, maintainable test scripts by following best practices, such as modularizing your code and using descriptive naming conventions. Regularly review and update your automation suite to remove flaky tests and ensure that it continues to provide value. Finally, measure the effectiveness of your automation efforts through metrics like defect detection rates and test execution times, and adjust your strategy as needed.
The Challenge: Finding the right balance between manual and automated testing is another common challenge. Over-reliance on one approach can lead to inefficiencies and missed defects.
The Solution: Develop a testing strategy that leverages the strengths of both manual and automated testing. Use automated testing for repetitive, time-consuming tasks, and manual testing for areas that require human judgment, such as user experience and exploratory testing. Regularly evaluate and adjust this balance as your project evolves and new testing needs arise.
“We screened three of the top requirements, risk, and test management tools and found Jama Connect scored much higher than the competitors. Jama Connect definitely meets our user needs.” – Principal Systems Engineer,Principal Systems Engineer, Health Care Providers & Services Company
8. Poorly Written or Incomplete Requirements
The Challenge: A testing suite can only be as good as the requirements being tested. Poor quality requirements or missing requirements = untrustworthy testing results and increased chances of defects. This is preventable and it’s much more expensive to catch issues with requirements by the time testing is happening. It’s far better to improve requirements quality earlier in the process.
The Solution: Educate team writing requirements on best practice frameworks (e.g. Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax – EARS). Review requirements for completeness and quality before building out test coverage. Make sure there’s collaboration between test writers/testers and requirements authors in case there are questions.
9. Undetected Impact of Changes
The Challenge: Changes happen, and no one likes to be blindsided. It can be challenging to accurately measure the impact of change and communicate to all impacted stakeholders. Not communicating changes to the appropriate stakeholders can lead to wasted resources on tests that don’t apply or need to be updated, delays, recalls, etc.
The Solution: Establish a change control process. Use a tool that helps you track and visualize the potential impact of changes across connected bodies of work, processes, and stakeholders. Review potential impact, discuss tradeoffs, and communicate with impacted stakeholders.
“Jama Software® is always looking for opportunities to improve its requirement management tool offering by adding new features and applications (e.g. Testing, Risk Management, V&V, SW application integration tools, etc.) – Jama Software listens to customer feedback for possible improvements to Jama Connect” – Director,Internet Software & Services Company
Conclusion
Test management is a critical component of successful product, systems, and software development. By addressing these common challenges with proactive strategies, you can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your testing efforts. Clear communication, effective use of tools, and a balanced approach to testing will help you deliver high-quality products that meet both business objectives and customer expectations.
In the end, the key to conquering these challenges lies in continuous improvement. Regularly assess your testing processes, learn from past mistakes, and be willing to adapt to new tools and methodologies. With the right approach, even the most daunting test management challenges can be overcome.
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Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Ashley Ernst and McKenzie Jonsson.
https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/09/Test-Management-1.png10801920Ashley Ernst/media/jama-logo-primary.svgAshley Ernst2024-09-19 03:00:252024-09-19 11:06:32Conquering the Top Test Management Challenges in Product, Systems, and Software Development
In this blog, we’ll recap our recent webinar, “Elevating MBSE with SysML: Jama Connect® and CATIA Magic in Action” – Click HERE to watch it in its entirety.
Elevating MBSE with SysML: Jama Connect® and CATIA Magic in Action
What happens when Jama Software®’s Traceable MBSE™ combines with Dassault Systèmes’ enterprise and system architecture modeling expertise in systems engineering?
This powerful and intuitive integration between CATIA/Cameo Systems Modeler and Jama Connect® aligns business and engineering, bridging the gap between requirements management, system architecture, design, and product management.
Key trends shaping the future of MBSE across the aerospace & defense industry
Challenges keeping Systems Engineers up at night
The impact of Jama Connect Traceable MBSE in defense applications
How Cameo Systems Engineering enhances system architecture
A live demonstration of Cameo DataHub’s integration with Jama Connect
Don’t miss this opportunity to see how this integration can transform your MBSE approach, driving success from concept to deployment.
Below is an abbreviated transcript of our webinar.
Cary Bryczek: To kick things off, I want to set the stage with some trends across the aerospace and defense industry that we’re seeing. I’ll talk about how those trends are creating challenges for chief engineers and describing what keeps them up at night, then I’ll set the stage for Saulius’s presentation by showing you what Jama Connect’s Traceable MBSE looks like and how it’s designed to solve those challenges. Saulius is going to take you on a deeper dive to show you how system models and Jama Connect interoperate.
So in the aerospace and defense industry, we are developing a new system that has complexity that far exceeds commercial product development. For example, the FAA’s program to develop the Unmanned Aircraft Traffic Management system involves not just a pilot and drone, but is designed to enable autonomous and semi-autonomous operation of multiple air systems, including the passenger and cargo delivery, in a really tightly integrated civil airspace. The elements in blue on the diagram are all distinct systems of their own, and the new traffic management system needs to integrate communications and data across all of those systems to provide this new capability.
In the highly constrained environment of outer space, for example, NASA’s Cislunar and I’m pretty sure the Artemis programs are focusing on the operation and survivability of autonomous systems. To develop a space system, NASA doesn’t do this in their own silo, but they have lots and lots of contracts and companies that they work with deliver parts of the system, just like in the DoD. For example, you have Blue Origin. They are developing a friction stir additive manufacturing part of the system in partnership with Langley, right? You have Redwire out of Erie, Colorado. They are developing another in-space manufacturing system. You have Canopy out of Denver. Colorado seems to be a popular place for space. They’re developing low-cost reusable thermal protection systems, right? And there’s really dozens more. The Cislunar and the Artemis programs are developing ecosystems and the ecosystems of those partners, right?
In the government agencies and aerospace and defense companies, they’re always evolving their strategies to be able to deal with this high degree of complexity to help streamline their engineering processes. For example, the DoD, they have published a new adaptive acquisition framework. So even not just in the engineering parts of it but the acquisition parts of it as well, there’s a new framework. This particular pathway is intended for large-scale traditional hardware acquisitions to help facilitate rapid and iterative delivery, like what the software capability programs are doing.
In 2018, we had the Digital Engineering Strategy outlining a vision to modernize how DoD designs develops, delivers, operates, and even sustains systems, right? By connecting people and process and data and developing these end-to-end digital enterprises.
The DoD’s Systems Engineering and Architecture group within the DoD itself is focusing on modernizing the systems engineering practice and they’re leveraging the capabilities coming out of SERC and MOSA to build systems that can be upgraded to incorporate new technology and respond to emerging threats, right?
With this new modernization of the SE approach, and now I know this is sort of an eye chart, you guys can look at it after the fact, the DoD has moved away from visualizing its process using that shape of the V model in favor of what more realistically takes place from a process standpoint, which is that modern systems engineering is highly cyclic in nature. Now, the outermost ring is as close to what the old V model, where concept definition is in the upper left, moves to system definition through architecture and design, over to V&V, and back around to start the next cycle. What’s important is that there’s a strong emphasis on measuring not just the system being built, but the process to build that system and that data and models are at the heart of it all. To the fullest extent, models should be used in favor of documents and data should inform the decision-making.
There really is a challenge to using a data-driven approach in the models. The DoD, I love this quote, “There’s a lack of an integrated approach to implementing systems engineering focus areas that’s creating a delay in implementing the digital transformation, which is necessary to ensure relevant guidance, skills, and training are available to deliver a disciplined approach to acquiring a weapon system.” Continuing to use legacy tools and approaches is what making integrated approaches gravely difficult. What’s necessary is to take a federated approach to data across the tool ecosystem and use tools with robust APIs, modern architectures that are standards-based. An MBSE approach requires an integrated approach to connect that system model’s architecture and requirements to program teams and software and hardware teams. It doesn’t mean using a siloed system modeling tool and expect those teams to be able to consume and understand that model. In fact, kind of what I hear a lot is, “How do I achieve the benefits of MBSE when no other engineers can access model parameters they need to use to make downstream decision-making, and how do I make decisions on tests and other things that’s downstream from the system model?” I hear that quite a lot.
Bryczek: Those with technical oversight and responsibility for program success who are executing MBSE or even just traditional systems engineering commonly raise these following questions. This is what I think keeps chief engineers up at night. “How do I know if the architecture and system requirements are satisfying all the needs?” “How do I know if a change in the architecture will impact those needs?” “How do I know if a change in the architecture will impact hardware or software teams?” And, “How do I streamline model design reviews?” I have a fourth one, too, “How do I detect unallocated systems architecture and requirements that sort of transcends the system model area and goes into the software models and the hardware models?” So that’s another favorite that I have.
So these questions really, we think, can be answered using what we term Traceable MBSE. The reality at most companies is that the end-to-end systems development processes is fragmented into domain-specific tools and spreadsheets that really don’t have a lot of collaboration or any, and this leads to fragmented requirements traceability and requires significant manual effort through emails and meetings and maybe even luck to try and prevent delays, defects, rework, cost overruns, right? Most companies have come to accept this situation as an unchangeable reality given the lack of a single platform to enable this entire process, nor a method to integrate spreadsheets and desktop tools. Using Traceable MBSE, the system model in the modeling tool is joined with the Jama Connect model. Jama [Connect] is continually calculating traceability and coverage and provides scores that can be used to identify high-risk areas that can be drilled into to determine corrective actions, the system model can detect those changes, and the modeling engineers can take corrective action.
Keep in mind that model-based systems engineering is more than using the power of SysML. It is powerful. Systems engineering’s superpower to enable digital transformation comes when it’s able to connect to the entire development effort and facilitate software and mechanical teams with the ability to align their efforts to the system model, systems engineers being able to manage the state of development across the disciplines and automatically identifying risks through all stages of development.
So let’s maybe see what this looks like in Jama [Connect.] This is Jama Connect in a web browser. I’m showing a Traceable MBSE project for development of a cube set. In it, I’m managing the end-to-end development of the program mission goals and objectives, stakeholder needs, concept of operations, system requirements, subsystems, software and hardware requirements, architecture, safety risks, verification and validation, and even user stories from Jira. Jama [Connect] is going to provide that measurable end-to-end traceability for all of their elements. Their version control and baselines provide design, review, and approval, plus make the data visible onto a series of dashboards.
All the interactions with Jama [Connect] are done in this web browser. Just to give you a little bit of navigation overview, if you’ve never seen Jama [Connect], you can see the data. You can organize the data pretty much however you want. You’re not constrained to how you want to call the data. Want to look inside stuff, you can open up and look inside the dashboards. The series of dashboards can be laid out however you want. You can have multiple dashboards. So this is my main one. I want to see a trace exception dashboard, I’m able to just organize them how I want, surface up that information. And they’re live too, so if I wanted to go and look at what any of these are, show me my objectives, needs, or goals, I can just click on them and it takes me pretty much right to where I want to be.
One of the things that makes Jama [Connect] special is the ability to define a data model for the information that you’re going to be managing in the model or the Jama [Connect] project and define how the traces are related together. And then our Live Trace Explorer™ is used to show real-time progress against expected traceability. So I open up my Live Trace Explorer for this particular project. The Live Trace Explorer is used to show the real-time state of progress of all of the items that are being managed in the system against the expected traceability according to those rule sets. When integrated with system modeling tools, like managing architecture, Jira managing the flow of tasks, using Live Trace Explorer, you can obtain this holistic view of quality across your entire system development and software factory process.
So this left-hand side shows requirements coverage and the right-hand side of the Live Trace Explorer shows test coverage, similar to a V model. Here you can see the program system-level requirements. So here we scroll down, we have the program system level requirements and all of the relationships established for traceability. This is based on the project’s traceability rule set, remember? Your project might use different names than what you see here. You’re not really constrained to using what comes out-of-the-box Jama [Connect] at all.
Bryczek: The Trace Explorer in the upper right, this Trace Score™ shows an overall traceability score for your project that you can use to gauge how quality changes, hopefully improves over time. So all of these metrics are real-time from what’s happening right now, and so 64% traceability, this is probably maybe early to midstream in development. We’re still seeing people still establishing traceability, right? But by increasing your traceability score, we really hope to reduce the risk of defects, cost overruns, and delays.
So what about some of those questions that keep chief engineers and program managers up at night? What about the ones that we were asked about? So question one is, “How do I know if architecture and system requirements are satisfying all the needs?” This is tracked in our Live Trace Explorer as a percentage of coverage between the linkages. So here we see a 55% coverage between these stakeholder expectations, which we have 36 stakeholder expectations, so 55% traceability established so far between those. And we only have, and if you scroll down, if you want to see what the architecture is, the architecture, we only have 50% coverage between the architecture and requirements.
So what about, “How do I know if a change in architecture is going to impact testing”? You can really easily see that here, the changes between what’s happening to testing. You can even see a percentage of the suspect changes. So right now, I might’ve already changed some of the requirements of your architecture. 11% is showing suspect. Right now, I don’t have a lot of test plan coverage. Still kind of in the early phases as well.
What about the third question, “How do I know if a change in architecture will impact hardware or software teams?” Right? Again, you can easily see any of the downstream traces to different things. And this is live, too, so if I wanted to see exactly, show me those objects, I can just click, it’s all interactive, and see exactly what the traceability between architecture and system requirements look like. I want to add more information to the view, maybe I want to see what the rationale is or the status, I can add that kind of view really super easily to my view. Jama [Connect] is really designed to make it easy for anyone to come in, understand what’s going on in the program, click and see instant traceability based on what you’re looking at.
So another question is, “How do I detect unallocated system architecture and requirements?” Unallocated activity can be used by running a query. So I have a filter that says, “Show me all of the unallocated architecture.” So I have four architectural elements that have no traces for requirements, and if I turn my trace view on, you can see these are just standalone objects. There’s no traceability either up or downstream to requirements of any kind. We really want to make this as easy as possible, as powerful as possible for people to measure in real time what does their traceability look like, how do I use traceability to effectively enhance the process and remediate actions before they might possibly happen.
So in summary, as systems development continues to increase in velocity, engineering leaders and program managers really need answers to those really tough questions. System modeling tools alone don’t easily provide that. With Jama [Connect]’s Live Trace Explorer, this is providing that real-time traceability score. Our approach for managing and controlling process is using actual data. Jama [Connect] is really the only one that can provide that holistic view. Very exciting.
And now, Saulius would love to show us how Dassault is connecting Jama [Connect] and CATIA Magic.
Saulius Pavalkis: So you saw the Jama [Connect]site. Now we’ll talk about the integration part with CATIA Magic leading SysML and MBSE solution for system architecture. So what is the reason, what is the differentiator, why it is the leading solution? So this was first product to support SysML v1, and pretty much all the versions from that was supported with the complete standard, following already for almost 20 years, as we can see, of the SysML appearance. Now we’ll be working on SysML v2, which will be another evolution and, again, the same goals. We became de facto standard for the many different project types in the industry, and pretty much the quality and scalability of the product and strict following of the standard enabled that. You can’t support all the big clients with the custom solutions unless you will follow some standard approach which allows to customize for each specific one later on.
And that brings us to our core values. So it is completely open. Also, as we will see here also from OpenAPI side, because that enabled us integrate in the proper way with the requirement management solution, Jama Software.
Standard compliance, another big deal because if you support the standard, maybe it is a bit harder than to integrate specifically for specific needs, right? But once you follow that, it’ll apply for all the different purposes, plus it will be clear which part of the integration needs to be updated with the standard update and with the tool development, which is not the case when you don’t follow the standards, right?
Efficiency and user-friendliness, ability to customize, and that’s like one of the most significant values because again, if you follow the standard, you get the 90% for the industry needs, but then you need to customize for specific industry, like what type of the data you want, as you saw in the Jama [Connect], you can select data set, what’s needed for specific project, have ability to create your own data set and then synchronize only on that data set and work on that model.
We support mostly system engineering community needs, and that is pretty much 90% or something of the product, because standard compliance is one thing, but then actually system engineering to enable better results with the model than PowerPoint, better tables and data management, and Excel is the key differentiator when you want to work with the model sufficiently.
The big part is continuity to disciplines. As you saw, traceability is big part of the Jama Software solution. Same for us, we dedicate most the attention for these integrations with the rest of the ecosystem. This is perhaps one of the most popular integrations, maybe the most popular integrations which we have. But in general, these are disciplines in engineering and analysis.
And also system engineering life cycle, as Cary mentioned, design reviews, this is very important process. Every organization goes through it and also in collaboration with suppliers, and that’s technically insight but also other processes which requires formal process with the approvals and baselines.
So talking about this integration specifically, we are using DataHub as integration framework. What are the highlights? It comes as a plugin actually for CATIA Magic. It’s built in in CATIA Magic. And this integration is also not an exception. It’s using this major integration framework, which is mostly for requirement tools integration. One of the most used integrations which we have is actually requirement management tools, and the most useful integration, used integration likely will be Jama Software integration from requirements management side. It provides similar experience for all the integrations and already set up operations which are common for the users, not to expect some surprises, but it is also redesigned to be more optimal, more user-friendly, and supports the standards like OSLC v2, but in our case, we are using direct API to Jama Connect, which is always the best case when you have ability to leverage that, and that shows again the openness of Jama Software and CATIA Magic.
Pavalkis: The workflow is very simple, so pretty much you connect the data source to Jama [Connect]. Jama [Connect] can be on the cloud, on premises. You select the scope for the synchronization. We support only one operation, copy and synchronize, which is by far the most popular one from all the experience we have. We then select the mapping based on the data sets selected, you know, could be new requirement types, could be new relations and so, and then we synchronize, first of all, by copying the data, but later on by checking changes, seeing the changes available and acting on those changes, synchronizing and acting on those changes with suspect links in our site. And also, on top of that, we support diagrams as an image interchange, which is a big deal because then you can actually work independently without all these requiring to see another solution for the part of the data.
Now, when we work together, what are the key connection highlights? So we support advanced authentication methods, simple authentication, and OAuth 2.0. On project selection, we select the data which will be available, what type of data will be available, and that data will allow us to map just to those elements from Jama Software type and see them synchronized to CATIA Magic using DataHub. As you can see here, we have this Cameo DataHub view in CATIA Magic, Cameo, and it is based on the same selected data in Jama Software for the project, right? And then you can see it with the icons with the exact representation that allows you to have the seamless interface.
The leverage, the same dedicated UI for identifying changes, what’s new, what is modified, move, delete it out of scope, and this allows us to see the change before synchronizing, so you can even apply element-by-element synchronization and, based on the direction of synchronization, you can choose one or another way to synchronize, which is always good to choose in advance not to have the conflicts on the authoritative source of truth.
We have number of items, type of elements in Jama Software which we synchronize. You can see the full list. It’s far more than just requirement, the different other types of attachments and so on. We allow, as I said before, to import the images to CATIA Magic and from CATIA Magic export diagrams as images to Jama, which allows you to review the diagrams in Jama Software and also see the architecture views from Jama Software and CATIA Magic and act on them.
![[Webinar Recap] Elevating MBSE with SysML: Jama Connect® and CATIA Magic in Action](https://www.jamasoftware.com/media/2024/09/Elevating-MBSE-with-SysML-Jama-Connect®-and-CATIA-Magic-in-Action-1.png "[Webinar Recap] Elevating MBSE with SysML: Jama Connect® and CATIA Magic in Action")