Tag Archive for: traceability

Innovating Aviation with Jama Connect® and Vertical Aerospace

In this blog, we overview our customer story, “Innovating Aviation with Jama Connect® and Vertical Aerospace.”

Vertical Aerospace Achieves New Heights with Jama Connect®

Vertical Aerospace is revolutionizing the aviation industry with sustainable, cutting-edge aircraft like the VX4. To meet ambitious goals and regulatory demands, they turned to Jama Connect. By integrating this powerful platform, Vertical Aerospace achieved seamless certification compliance, improved collaboration, and accelerated their innovation process. With Jama Connect’s Live Traceability™ and intelligent project management capabilities, they’ve streamlined complex workflows and stayed ahead in an industry demanding nothing less than first-rate precision and speed.

Discover how Vertical Aerospace transformed their development process and realized their vision for sustainable aviation.

Key Benefits Vertical Aerospace Experienced:

  • Smooth Certification Compliance: Simplified handling of configuration changes.
  • Enhanced Collaboration: Merged data for smarter decisions.
  • Streamlined Workflow: Eliminated bottlenecks for efficiency.
  • Tailored Flexibility: Customized tools for specific needs.
  • Faster Innovation: Delivered results with expert support.

Watch the video HERE or click below to see how Jama Connect can help your team succeed.

 

RELATED: Jama Connect for Airborne Systems

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Kirsty Boyd: Here at Vertical, we are pioneering electric aviation. We’re transforming how the world moves, and through that, we’ve created the VX4. The VX4 is a masterclass in eVTOL aircraft built specifically for sustainable travel and the use case in order to move people faster, better, leaner, more efficiently. For certification, we have to be very black and white. We have to really understand our limitations, our performance of our aircraft. The decisions in the design process that go into those solutions needs to be very well understood. And as you go through the process, things change. Configuration management is a massive part of what we try and do, and we have to be able to prove to the regulator that we’ve identified what those changes are, we’ve dealt with them in an appropriate way, and that we’ve got traceability from top to tail of that.

Karl Mulcahy: So Jama Software is the name of our company, and Jama Connect is the name of our platform. Our platform helps customers to embrace live traceability across the product development lifecycle and ensure that innovation succeeds. It’s a collaborative platform to bring everybody together to make sure that we combine data sources and intelligently make better decisions about our projects, to help you identify gaps in your traceability, to help remove bottlenecks, but ultimately to help bring your industry expertise to companies like Vertical Aerospace and help realize their innovation faster.

Kirsty Boyd: Vertical understood that we needed requirements management in order to certify the platform. And so we did a trade study to analyze different tools that were available in industry. We were looking at cost, efficiency, how flexible they were, how we could tailor them, and we down-selected Jama Connect.

Karl Mulcahy: So Jama Connect helps to bring our industry expertise to forefront. And what that means is we can help provide common ways of working that we’ve used with other clients and working with industry bodies to help streamline compliance or certification mandates.

Kirsty Boyd: We’re trying to do something completely and utterly new here. We don’t have an option for second-rate. We have to use incredibly intelligent partnering in order to meet our timescales, our deadlines, our technology advancement. We don’t have a choice but to go for first-rate partnering.

Karl Mulcahy: Personally, I’m very proud to work with Vertical Aerospace. It’s something that’s brand new in terms of the industry. I know Vertical are at the forefront of the industry. My little boy does ask me a lot what I do for a living. I tell him I work with rockets and planes and to show him this maybe at some point, I’m sure he’s going to be very excited to see it. And maybe one day, he’ll ride in one too.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution for Aerospace

Ticking clock wearing a graduation cap next to text reading that this topic is about AEC project management with Jama Connect.

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Solution

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, Michelle Solis, Solutions Architect at Jama Software, explores how Jama Connect helps the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Industry manage complex requirements and streamline project communication.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Michelle Solis: Hello, I’m Michelle Solis, a Solutions Architect at Jama Software. In this video, we’ll explore how Jama Connect helps the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry manage complex requirements and streamline project communication.

AEC projects, whether it’s building a structure, designing a rail system, or developing an airport, come with complex requirements involving multiple teams. Communication is often fragmented and mid-project requirement changes can add confusion. Traditionally, the process unfolds in a linear workflow. The owner issues an RFP, teams respond, and the project is awarded. Once the project is underway, however, the owner may change requirements, making it hard for teams to see what parts of the project are affected.

Managing this process with documents alone, whether in Word, Excel, or PDF, is insufficient for managing these changes effectively, leading to missed updates, delays, and financial losses. Project management tools store documents but don’t provide visibility into relationships between requirements and tasks, making it hard to track changes across teams.

RELATED: Six Key Challenges in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) Industry and How to Solve Them with Jama Connect

Solis: Jama Connect addresses these challenges by shifting from a document-centric to a requirements-driven approach. Instead of static Word documents, Jama Connect allows you to break down requirements into actionable items, improving clarity and manageability.

AEC projects often involve strict compliance requirements, such as LEED or ADA regulations, which can be difficult to track in traditional documents leading to missed updates or compliance gaps. With features like traceability, Jama Connect ensures these requirements are continuously monitored and managed throughout all project phases from the bidding process to construction, helping teams stay aligned with project goals.

By eliminating document silos, Jama Connect fosters collaboration across teams, providing real-time visibility into requirement changes, and ensuring that all requirements remain clear, traceable, and adaptable.

Let’s dive into Jama Connect and take a look at how this solution works. Here’s an example of a project with requirements entailing a new building. This project includes a traceability information model that begins with owner requirements. These requirements represent the written specifications and expectations set by the project owner. They are imported into Jama Connect, and then broken down into project requirements.

Those further break down to system requirements, design documents, and regulatory compliance, all of which we can validate and link to evidence provided by subcontractors ensuring full traceability across different aspects of the project lifecycle.

On the left panel is the explorer tree where the requirements live. If we click on a set of our requirements, we can see them in our List View, which is similar to Excel with rows and columns that we can adjust by dragging and dropping, or our document view, which is similar to working in Word and functions like a live document that we can edit by double-clicking and making our changes.

Jama Connect’s traceability features illustrate to us as end-users how change impacts our project. If I want to make changes to a project requirement, like this example of vertical circulation, I can first run an Impact Analysis to see if there are any potential upstream and downstream impacts. This shows me all of the requirements that may be impacted if I change this requirement. If this requirement changes because there’s a new weight capacity regulation to the elevator, then downstream, we should make the according changes to the elevator control system requirement and further downstream to the elevator validation and load monitoring subsystem requirement.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Solis: There are requirements here that will not be affected if I were to make these changes because it’s specific to the elevator functionality, so some of these escalator downstream requirements won’t be impacted. Impact Analysis shows us all of the potential impacts, but it’s up to us to decide if there’s indeed an impact and to make the necessary changes.

Jama Connect also has a full version history for all of our projects and other types of requirements. If I click on the version history, I can compare version two to version three and see all of the red and green line differences. So it looks like I removed some text and added that weight capacity regulation compliance.

With Jama Connect, AEC teams can move beyond static documents to a dynamic, requirements-driven approach, breaking down complex project requirements into actionable items, ensuring traceability, and maintaining compliance with industry regulations like LEED and ADA. By fostering real-time collaboration and eliminating silos, Jama Connect helps teams stay aligned, adapt to changes seamlessly, and keep projects on track from design to construction.

Thank you for watching this demonstration of Jama Connect for AEC Industries. If you would like to learn more about how Jama Connect can optimize your AEC projects, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com. If you’re already a Jama Connect customer and would like more information, please contact your customer success manager or Jama Software consultant.

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

Headshot of a subject matter expert leading a webinar on Unlocking the Power of the Digital Thread in MBSE

In this blog, we recap our recent webinar, “Unlocking the Power of the Digital Thread in MBSE”

Best Practices: Unlocking the Power of the Digital Thread in Traceable MBSE™

In the world of product and systems development, integrating the digital thread throughout Model-Based Systems Engineering process isn’t just an advantage — it’s a game-changer.

In this engaging webinar, host Brian Kennedy, Principal Solutions Consultant at Jama Software, will show how the digital thread transforms MBSE, driving better traceability, stronger collaboration, and greater efficiency across the product lifecycle. You’ll also see how Live Trace Explorer™ helps connect your MBSE tools seamlessly, creating Traceable MBSE™.

What You’ll Learn:

  • The role of the digital thread in enhancing Traceable MBSE workflows
  • Best practices for building a connected thread across diverse systems
  • How Live Trace Explorer improves product quality, reduces risks, and accelerates delivery
  • Using coverage metrics to identify gaps and ensure process completeness
  • Proven strategies to reduce iteration loops and support regulatory compliance

Walk away with actionable insights to strengthen your Traceable MBSE processes — and see how Jama Connect® can elevate your engineering workflows.

Below is an abbreviated transcript of our webinar.

Briand Kennedy: During today’s webinar, I’m going to be discussing the process of unlocking the power of the digital thread in Traceable MBSE. To begin with, let’s just take a step back and understand what exactly is the Traceable MBSE process and where did it originate from? Today, many products that companies produce are live for safety-critical and one of the requirements for life and safety-critical products is that the company must completely document how the product should perform. Additionally, they have to also prove that it performs as specified. As products have become much more complicated and sophisticated and systems have become much more integrated and difficult to model doing this process has become a greater challenge than it was maybe previously.

As a result of us interviewing various engineering leaders who are responsible for product release, we asked them what keeps you up at night? What are the top things that these engineering leaders say keeps them up at night? As we listened to them, we heard many common questions come up. These are the five top questions or issues that they indicated. The first one is, how do I know which product requirements have been missed in my design? How do I know which product requirements are not fully covered by my test cases that I’ve defined? How do I know which product requirements have failed to pass tests? How do I identify development activity that happens to be using incorrect requirements or maybe isn’t even directly connected to requirements? And finally, how do I know if changes that have been made in say, hardware impacts my software team or if a requirement change impacts either the hardware or software team? How do I understand this traceability? These are the things that we’ve heard a lot about. I bet one of these might resonate with you.

RELATED: Bridging ALM and MBSE: Strategies for Seamless Integration

Kennedy: I’ll tell you what, why don’t we take a quick survey? There’s going to be a survey that pops up, and we’ll give you a couple of minutes to walk through these questions and tell us which one of these questions do you identify most with or is most pressing on your needs. Thank you very much for answering which one of these questions is the one you most identify with. At the end of this presentation, we’re going to come back to each one of these questions and show you how Traceable Model-Based System Engineering processes and the digital thread can help address each one of these items.

So, let’s talk a little bit about how we have developed Traceable MBSE to address these situations. To start with, let’s talk about where we came from. And we came from a paper-based system, and it doesn’t fully address these questions that we have here. And so, in order to solve these problems, we’ve performed a digital transformation, and that started with a very simple thing a long time ago of actually switching from physical paper over to electronic files. This provided significant improvements in efficiency and allowed each domain and discipline to be able to capture their data electronically versus on paper. It does improve communication, allows us to share data more easily, and allows us to reuse data in a much easier process. But fundamentally, this first step of converting from paper to electronic file, although it was a huge advantage, didn’t fundamentally change the process in which we did system engineering. We were still stuck with disconnected data.

So the next phase in this is what I call the decomposition phase. This occurred when we actually took those individual documents, for example, a complete requirement specification, and decomposed it to individual items. And this was very powerful. What we were able to do is instead of having a single document with all the specifications in it, we would decompose it to individual requirements, and each individual requirement could be referenced independently. And in fact, they allowed us to reuse this data and such. So you could have the same requirement being reused in multiple places, whereas before, you literally had two separate pieces of text that you were duplicating. Once again, another huge improvement in efficiency. This concept of decomposition doesn’t just isolate two requirements. It implemented various other things, such as the modeling systems for various other things. And it ended up creating a capability so that each discipline, each domain was able to create unique tools that address decomposition or analysis or simulation of their particular areas.

RELATED: Jama Connect for Traceable MBSE™

Kennedy: So what we saw was requirements identification and subsystem requirement identification, being executed in Word or Excel spreadsheets initially, and even going into some modeling techniques and different tools. So we ended up with a verification validation process that for each individual domain we were able to create some decent automation, but they weren’t connected. Each group was independently looking at their data and creating it, and there wasn’t consistent reuse across it and no consistent way of knowing what was the correct stuff. We depended on things like email and such like that. So it really created an impact on things like a lack of ongoing risk assessment, and change management became very difficult because even though we had decomposed some of the things and we had captured all the documents electronically, we still were not interconnected. We didn’t have a uniform interconnectivity, and this meant we had to take one more step in our digital transformation. And that final step was to create a true full model definition.

And when we talk about creating a full model, it involves quite a few things. First is governance. We have to create a structure and version control on top of the data. So we would classify the data in groups and control each one of those individual items, requirements simulations, functional definition, architectures as individual items and version control them in a controlled system in a database framework. So, we had a governance structure and control framework that needed to be defined. We then expanded from just having text-based or static images to having full diagrams where each item was interrelated and connected together. And we were able to create visual diagrams that illustrated how our systems were being designed, how functions and sub-functions and systems and subsystems were supposed to interact, and how data was supposed to flow from one part of our system to another. And we created these diagrams. Finally, we created a common data model, which allowed us to capture all these different pieces of data and define relationships from one item to the other and have consistent terminology and consistent use of that data. So we had one requirement defined in one place,e and it was used wherever it was needed by referencing that single item. And so that’s where we talk about a data model. We needed a complete data model to capture all this data that we were governing in the governance area and in the diagrams.

To watch the entire webinar, visit:

Best Practices: Unlocking the Power of the Digital Thread in Traceable MBSE™

Jama Connect® Enables DevSecOps Through Robust API and Integrations That Connect All Activity to Requirements

In this blog, we overview our new datasheet – Click HERE to read it in its entirety.

Jama Connect® Enables DevSecOps Through Robust API and Integrations That Connect All Activity to Requirements

DevSecOps involves integrating security into all phases of the software development lifecycle. Rather than waiting to start analysis of potential vulnerabilities until after the software product, system, or subsystem is completed, this strategy puts security at the center of software development from the start to identify issues when the cost of resolving them is lowest. It also enlists everyone to play a part in identifying, assessing, and mitigating security risks in their individual development-related activities.

Comprehensive Security Risk Management and Seamless Tool Integration

The biggest challenge in achieving DevSecOps success is the need to assess and manage security risks across all software development tools and teams in an efficient and comprehensive manner. DevSecOps leaders choose Jama Connect because it is the only requirements management solution that provides the automation and collaboration required. Its robust REST API provides alignment with an integrated CI/CD pipeline including Jira, Azure DevOps, Git, GitLab, Subversion, Jenkins, Splunk, Kubernetes, Visual Studio, and Coverity. The Jama Connect platform delivers Live Traceability™, connecting all DevSecOps activity to the singular common element that defines value across all steps in the process — the requirement. It provides intuitive, accessible collaboration and review capabilities for internal and external teams.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Enable Cybersecure-by-Design Compliance with DO-326A Standards

Jama Connect for Airborne Systems supports a DevSecOps strategy by applying a cybersecure-by-design approach to meeting DO-326A standards. With Live Traceability, Jama Connect overcomes the disconnectedness of processes in the tool ecosystem that causes certification delays, cost overruns, product failures, audit findings, late identification of defects, and lack of visibility. It makes change management between software and hardware easier and reduces the effort needed to demonstrate requirements and test traceability required for certification.

KEY BENEFITS:

  • Integrate security across all DevOps and testing software Jama Connect’s robust open REST API and market-proven integrations with best-of-breed DevOps and testing software tools make it possible to connect all DevSecOps activity to the common element that defines value across all steps in the process – requirements.
  • Start identifying security vulnerabilities early in the development process Jama Connect reduces the risk of releasing code with security vulnerabilities by focusing on security requirements and
    testing from the early stages of development.
  • Empower the entire team to contribute to DevSecOps Jama Connect’s easy-to-use collaboration and review capabilities provide an inclusive, safe, and collaborative environment for internal and
    external development, security, and operations teams to build software that is efficient and secure.

Managing DevSecOps in Jama Connect

This image shows a figure 8 type charge that portrays the easy workflow of managing DevSecOps in Jama Connect.

TO READ THIS DATASHEET IN ITS ENTIRETY, VISIT:
Jama Connect® Enables DevSecOps Through Robust API and Integrations That Connect All Activity to Requirements

The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect® Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability

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.

RELATED: See why users rank Jama Connect as the #1 requirements management tool on the market in the most recent G2 Report

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.

LEARN MORE

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.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS EBOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY:
The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability

Traceability in Systems Engineering: A Key to Successful Construction Projects

Traceability in Systems Engineering: A Key to Successful Construction Projects

In the world of systems engineering, “traceability” is a concept that plays a crucial role in ensuring the success of complex projects. While it’s a term more commonly associated with fields like aerospace, defense, and software development, its principles are increasingly being applied to construction projects to improve outcomes, reduce risks, and ensure seamless project delivery.

What is Traceability in Systems Engineering?

Traceability in systems engineering refers to the ability to link each requirement to its source and track its fulfillment throughout the project lifecycle. This process involves creating a chain of evidence that shows how each requirement was derived, implemented, verified, and validated.

Simply put, traceability ensures that every requirement is accounted for from the moment it is conceived until the project is completed. It enables project managers, engineers, and stakeholders to understand the origins, rationale, and status of each requirement, ensuring that nothing is missed or overlooked.

RELATED: The Complete Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK)

How Does Traceability Work in Systems Engineering?

  • Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM): A core tool in traceability, the RTM maps each requirement to its corresponding design documents, test cases, and validation outcomes. This helps ensure that every requirement is directly linked to project deliverables.
  • Bi-directional Traceability: This involves tracking requirements both forward (from requirements to design, implementation, and testing) and backward (from deliverables back to the original requirements). This helps in managing changes, assessing the impact of modifications, and maintaining alignment between project objectives and outcomes.
  • Change Control and Impact Analysis: Traceability helps in managing changes to requirements by providing a clear understanding of how any change will affect the project. This is crucial for managing scope, cost, and schedule risks.

Applying Traceability to Construction Projects

While traceability is a fundamental practice in systems engineering, its application in the construction industry is becoming increasingly valuable. Here’s how traceability can be applied to make construction projects more successful:

  • Ensuring Complete and Clear Requirements: In construction, poorly defined or misunderstood requirements are a leading cause of project delays, cost overruns, and rework. By applying traceability practices, construction teams can ensure that all requirements are clearly defined, documented, and understood by all stakeholders from the outset. This reduces the risk of ambiguity and miscommunication, ensuring that every stakeholder is aligned with the project’s objectives.
  • Managing Complexity and Change: Modern construction projects are complex, involving multiple teams, disciplines, and stakeholders. Changes are inevitable, whether due to design modifications, client requests, or regulatory updates. Traceability allows construction teams to track every change back to its source, understand its impact on the project, and ensure that all affected requirements, designs, and plans are updated accordingly. This reduces the risk of errors, omissions, and costly rework.
  • Improving Compliance and Reducing Risks: Construction projects are subject to numerous regulations, standards, and codes. Traceability provides a structured way to ensure that all project requirements meet the necessary compliance standards. By maintaining an audit trail of all requirements and their fulfillment, construction teams can quickly demonstrate compliance, reducing the risk of regulatory penalties, legal disputes, and reputational damage.
  • Enhancing Communication and Collaboration: Traceability fosters better communication and collaboration among stakeholders by providing a single source of truth for all requirements. It ensures that everyone, from architects and engineers to contractors and clients, has access to the same information and understands how their work contributes to the overall project goals. This reduces misunderstandings, promotes accountability, and enhances teamwork.
  • Facilitating Project Delivery and Quality Assurance: Traceability helps ensure that the project is delivered on time and within budget by enabling construction teams to proactively manage risks, anticipate challenges, and respond to changes efficiently. By maintaining a clear line of sight from requirements to deliverables, teams can ensure that all project goals are met, and quality standards are achieved.

RELATED: AEC Best Practices Guide to Requirements Management

Why is Traceability Critical for Construction Project Success?

  • Reducing Rework and Cost Overruns: Traceability minimizes the risk of errors, omissions, and changes that lead to rework—a significant cause of cost overruns in construction. Industry studies estimate that rework can account for 5-15% of total project costs. By ensuring that every requirement is correctly implemented from the start, traceability helps reduce these costs and keeps the project on budget.
  • Improving Stakeholder Confidence: Traceability provides transparency and accountability, which is critical for building trust with stakeholders, including clients, regulators, and project teams. When everyone can see a clear, documented path from requirements to outcomes, confidence in the project’s success increases.
  • Ensuring Compliance and Avoiding Legal Issues: With construction projects facing stringent regulations and standards, traceability helps ensure that all requirements are met, reducing the risk of non-compliance penalties, delays, and legal issues. It provides an audit trail that can be used to demonstrate compliance to regulators, clients, and other stakeholders.
  • Supporting Continuous Improvement: Traceability provides valuable data and insights that can be used to improve future projects. By analyzing the traceability data, construction firms can identify patterns, lessons learned, and areas for improvement, leading to better project planning, execution, and outcomes in the future.

Conclusion

Traceability is not just a concept reserved for systems engineering; it is a powerful tool that can transform construction projects. By applying traceability practices, construction teams can reduce costs, manage complexity, ensure compliance, and build stakeholder confidence. As construction projects become more complex and multidisciplinary, traceability will increasingly become a key driver of success, helping teams deliver high-quality projects on time and within budget.

By adopting traceability, construction firms can not only improve their current projects but also build a foundation for continuous improvement, innovation, and sustained success in the industry.

Are you ready to make traceability a cornerstone of your construction project strategy?

Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Joe Gould, McKenzie Jonsson, and Decoteau Wilkerson.

Integrating Digital Engineering and the Digital Thread for Semiconductor Design

Integrating Digital Engineering and the Digital Thread for Semiconductor Design

Preface:

In Marc Osofsky’s original post, “What is the Definition of a Digital Thread?”, he introduced Singh and Willcox from MIT’s definition of a Digital Thread and broke down each component of their definition. Building on that foundation, this post explores the application of the digital thread within semiconductor design — a field where the stakes are high and the need for integration has not only emerged as a strategic differentiator; but well… a requirement.

The semiconductor industry is at another crossroads, again. As Integrated Circuits (ICs) become increasingly advanced, the design process continues to grow more complex. Engineers and product teams wrestle with challenges ranging from ensuring power efficiency, manufacturability, meeting time-to-market demands, integrating diverse IP blocks, and adhering to stringent functional safety and cybersecurity standards. Within these challenges lie opportunities for those who adapt and innovate.

The Digital Thread: Connecting the Design Lifecycle

One of the most pressing issues facing semiconductor companies today is how to architect and deploy seamless software integration across the entire design lifecycle. Best-in-breed software tools are common within certain pockets of the IC development flow. The EDA titans do a great job on the front end of the design cycle and help their users create a firm handshake between a designer and their foundry and fabrication partners. However, end-to-end integration across the entire product development lifecycle continues to be highly sought after, but oftentimes difficult to obtain.

From initial requirements through design, simulation, verification, post-silicon validation, and production – the concept of the digital thread ensures that both internal and external stakeholders have access to a single source of truth for design and test information.

RELATED: How to Manage Cybersecurity in Jama Connect® for Automotive and Semiconductor Industries

The Role of EDA in Chip Design

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools are essential for managing the growing complexity of semiconductor design. They enable designers to automate time-consuming and error-prone tasks involved in chip design, such as synthesis, verification, and physical design.

When EDA tools become integrated with the digital thread, it unlocks the capability for front-end design data to flow seamlessly with the middle and latter stages of development; from concept to final tape-out. This EDA tool/digital thread integration not only improves efficiency but also enhances collaboration between different teams, reduces the likelihood of design errors leading to costly response, and ensures that ICs are ready for production faster.

The digital thread helps semiconductor teams manage the increasing complexity of chip design by providing a holistic view of the entire product lifecycle. Advanced process nodes introduce new constraints, including challenges related to thermal management, signal integrity, and power consumption. Design houses must manage these competing priorities with a robust design process while trying to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. Even with the best processes and prioritization methods from the leading fabless chip designers and Integrated Device Manufacturers – there are often gaps.

The Role of Digital Engineering

Digital engineering is more than just adopting new software tools — it’s a cultural shift towards integrated, model-based approaches that ensure stakeholders across the product lifecycle have constant access to the information they need. The digital thread and a “single source of truth” are at the core of this transformation, providing continuous connectivity that bridges requirements throughout design, verification, and validation. Designers adopting these approaches are finding they can pivot more easily to implement design changes and minimize rework, resulting in measurable cost savings and faster development cycles.

Managing Requirements Effectively

Requirements management has become a critical success factor in semiconductor design. As designs grow more complex, so do the needs and specifications they must meet. A robust requirements management solution, integrated into the digital thread, helps ensure every requirement is tracked from conception through to production, allowing engineers to maintain clear visibility into design intent. Moving away from spreadsheets and adopting requirements management tools that are purpose-built for the semiconductor industry reduces errors, streamlines collaboration, and enables folks to produce better products.

RELATED: Leading Quantum Computing Company, IonQ, Selects Jama Connect® to Decrease Review Cycles, Reduce Rework

Opportunities in a Shifting Landscape

Semiconductor design is a dog-eat-dog world and not for the faint of heart. Technological advancements — such as the adoption of AI in design automation, the exploration of new materials, and advanced packaging techniques — are opening new frontiers. But capitalizing on these advancements requires strong foundations: an emphasis on effective communication, adaptable tools, and a focus on managing complexity holistically.

The digital thread concept is dual purpose and conveniently provides organizations with the foundation needed to monetize tangential opportunities around generative AI, data lake and delta lake development, and agential model development for IC design and manufacturing. Pairing digital engineering and digital thread concepts with a modern requirements management system will not only alleviate many current challenges – but it also builds resilience for future innovations and will help identify and capture currently unrealized revenue streams.

The Bottom Line

The semiconductor industry is evolving rapidly. Those who embrace new methodologies and tools with end-to-end capabilities are well-positioned to succeed. Adopting a digital engineering approach that marries the concept of a digital thread with a formal requirements management platform is likely a key focus area for your competition. If it isn’t yet a key focus area or cornerstone of your organization, check out www.jamasoftware.com and contact us today for a no-cost consultation with our experts.

How to Overcome Development Challenges: Collaboration & Alignment in Complex Product, Systems, and Software Development

In the dynamic world of product and software development, effective collaboration is crucial for success. However, teams often face significant challenges that can hinder progress and innovation. Understanding these challenges and finding robust solutions is essential for seamless and productive teamwork. One such solution is Jama Connect®, a powerful platform designed to enhance collaboration and streamline development processes. In this blog post, we will explore the common challenges in collaboration and how Jama Connect can help overcome them.

Common Collaboration Challenges in Product and Software Development

1: Communication Gaps

  • Problem: Miscommunication or lack of communication can lead to misunderstandings, errors, and delays. With team members often working remotely or across different time zones, keeping everyone on the same page can be difficult.
  • Solution: Jama Connect provides a centralized communication platform where all team members can access the latest information, updates, and discussions. This helps ensure everyone is aligned and informed, reducing the risk of miscommunication.

2: Fragmented Documentation

  • Problem: Keeping track of documentation and ensuring it is up-to-date can be challenging, especially when it is spread across multiple tools and platforms. This fragmentation can lead to confusion and inconsistencies.
  • Solution: Jama Connect offers a unified repository for all project documentation. Teams can create, store, and manage documents in one place, making it easier to maintain consistency and quickly find the necessary information.

“Jama Connect has a very powerful user interface, traceability, coverage, revision history, and review collaboration. The verification and validation plan runs are great for program tests traceability.” – Ander Solorzano, Principal Systems Engineer, Astrobotic

3: Requirement Mismanagement

  • Problem: Managing requirements effectively is critical in product development, but it can be challenging to track changes and ensure all requirements are met. Mismanagement can result in overlooked or unmet requirements, leading to product issues and customer dissatisfaction.
  • Solution: Jama Connect’s requirements management capabilities allow teams to define, track, and manage requirements throughout the development lifecycle. This ensures that all requirements are documented, tracked, and verified, reducing the risk of oversight.

RELATED: Why Choose Jama Connect® Over Microsoft Word and Excel Documents for Requirements Management

4: Lack of Visibility

  • Problem: Limited visibility into the project’s progress and status can hinder decision-making and delay issue resolution. Team members and stakeholders need a clear view of the project’s health to make informed decisions.
  • Solution: Jama Connect provides real-time visibility into project status, progress, and potential roadblocks. Dashboards and reporting tools offer insights into key metrics, helping teams identify issues early and take corrective action.

5: Inefficient Review and Approval Processes

  • Problem: Traditional review and approval processes can be time-consuming and prone to bottlenecks. Delays in getting approvals can slow down the entire development process.
  • Solution: Jama Connect streamlines review and approval workflows, allowing teams to collaborate efficiently. Automated notifications and reminders ensure that reviews and approvals are completed promptly, keeping the project on track.

“Prior to selecting Jama Connect, we had experience with other platforms, we had multiple trials and settled on Jama Connect because of how innovative it is. Especially in areas of Collaboration, Ease of Use, and the ability to configure and integrate with other lifecycle tools.” – Sr Principal Business Analyst and Enterprise Architect, Biotechnology Company

How Jama Connect® Facilitates Effective Collaboration

1: Centralized Platform

  • Jama Connect serves as a single source of truth for all project-related information, enabling seamless collaboration. Team members can easily access and share information, ensuring everyone is working with the latest data.

2: Real-Time Collaboration

  • With real-time collaboration features, Jama Connect allows team members to work together on documents, requirements, and tasks simultaneously. This reduces delays and fosters a more collaborative environment.

3: Traceability

  • Jama Connect ensures end-to-end traceability, allowing teams to trace requirements, design, implementation, and testing back to the original source. This traceability helps maintain alignment and accountability throughout the development process.

“Jama Connect is a centralized platform for managing requirements, fostering collaboration, and ensuring alignment across global teams.” – Sekhar Ghandikota, Senior Engineer, Ford Motor

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

4: Customizable Workflows

  • The platform offers customizable workflows that can be tailored to fit the specific needs of the team. This flexibility ensures that teams can implement processes that work best for them, improving efficiency and collaboration.

5: Integration with Other Tools

  • Jama Connect integrates seamlessly with other popular development tools, such as Jira, Slack, and GitHub. This integration helps teams maintain a connected ecosystem, reducing the need to switch between different tools and platforms.

“Jama Connect offers robust collaboration features, traceability and API endpoints. Throughout the development process, efficiency is gained.” – Sekhar Ghandikota, Senior Engineer, Ford Motor

Conclusion

Collaboration is the cornerstone of successful product and software development, but it comes with its own set of challenges. Jama Connect addresses these challenges by providing a robust platform that enhances communication, documentation, requirement management, visibility, and workflows. By leveraging Jama Connect, teams can overcome collaboration hurdles, streamline their development processes, and ultimately deliver high-quality products.

Are you ready to transform your collaboration and take your product development to the next level? Explore Jama Connect today and see how it can help your team achieve its goals.

Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Kenzie Jonsson.

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Git Repository Integration

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 the powerful features in Jama Connect®… in about five minutes.

In this Features in Five Integration Series video, Atef Ghribi, Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software® – demonstrates a Git repository integration with Jama Connect® using a repository in GitLab.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Atef Ghribi: Hello and welcome to the Features in Five Integration series. My name is Atef Ghribi and I am a senior solution architect at Jama Software. Today, we’ll be looking at the Git repositories integration using an example of a repository in GitLab. We make it possible for you to integrate Jama Connect with the preferred best-of-breed software to achieve Live Traceability™ across the end-to-end development cycle. Live requirements traceability is the ability for any engineer at any time to see the most up-to-date and complete upstream and downstream information for any requirement, no matter the stage of systems development or how many siloed tools and teams it spans.

This enables significant productivity and quality improvements, dramatically reduces the risk of product delays, cost overruns, defects, rework, and recalls, and ultimately results in faster time to market. Jama Connect being the central space repository for holistic overview across the traceability chain will be able to store the source code change track published by the integration hub from the source code repository management tools such as GitHub or GitLab. This allows software developers to work in their environments without adding additional steps to ensure traceability.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Ghribi: The integration hub will take care of publishing the source code, and commit information to Jama Connect as soon as they are available in the Git repository. Additionally, software developers can provide traceability information in their source code commits, which will allow Jama Connect to create the trace links to other items, making sure that source code change sets are embedded into the traceability chain. By providing this seamless integration, Jama Connect will ensure better accessibility beyond tool boundaries to source code traceability for stakeholders who are not necessarily familiar with Git repositories.

This holistic traceability enables better efficiency in conducting impact analysis and controlling the change management process as well as facilitating reporting and tracking of metrics across tools to assess and achieve compliance with less effort. Here is a simple flow between GitLab and Jama Connect. I will start by adding a simple implementation task to my Jama Connect project. This is the input for the software developer to start working on the implementation. Now this is just an example. We can here use any other item type based on the process defined and configured within Jama Connect.

Going to my implementation issues set and here I will start by creating a new task and then I will just save and close and this will create a new implementation task inside of my Jama Connect project. I will take the ID provided by Jama Connect as information that I will use later for the traceability. Now in GitLab I will make some changes to my source code and will make sure to mention the implementation task ID and my source code commit. I’m of course just using the UI of GitLab here to edit the file, but this would be the same process if I’m working on a different environment development machine and submitting the changes sets from my own local repository.

We are just keeping things simple for the time being. So going into my file and then I’m going to edit the file as a single file just here adding some changes and I will make sure to mention in the commit message the message for the change. And then I will just put the ID as I got it from Jama Connect and now I will just commit the changes and we will see what will happen inside of Jama Connect. The integration will take care of the rest and we will go back to Jama and see how the source code change commit was published and how the traceability will be defined inside of Jama Connect.

RELATED: The Benefits of Jama Connect®: Supercharge Your Systems Development and Engineering Process

Ghribi: Within a few seconds based on the integration configured, we can refresh our project inside of Jama Connect and see how the source code change set will be published to the spot in the project tree that we defined in the integration hub. We will just refresh and now we will see that we now have one item representing our change commit with the name that was provided. So if we look closer here, we’ll be able to see that we have that same message. If we look at the traceability on the right-hand side of the screen and our relationship switch it, we will be able to see that there is one upstream link to the task implementation task that we used in the comment.

So as software developers we don’t need to redundantly create any items inside of Jama Connect or create any links after we submit our traceability. If I go also to the task that is inside of Jama Connect and look at the traceability chain, and refresh, we’ll be able to see here that source code traceability that is managed. So we have bidirectional traceability already inside of Jama Connect, which will now allow us to have and embed our code or change sets traceability source code to the traceability chain of our project.

Thank you for watching this Feature in Five session on the Git repositories integration for Jama Connect. If you are an existing customer and want to learn more, please reach out to your customer success manager or consultant. If you are not yet a client, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com to learn more about the platform and how we can help optimize your development processes.

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

This image depicts our Jama Connect Features in Five video series.

Jama Connect®‘s Features in Five Series:
Your Guide to Streamlining Product Development

Learn how you can supercharge your systems development process! In our Features in Five video series, we pull back the curtains to give you a look at a few of the powerful features in Jama Connect®… in under five minutes.

Topics from this series include:

In this blog, we’ll showcase a selection of topics from our Jama Connect® Features in Five video series, plus preview our upcoming integration video series.

Live Traceabilty™

Would you like to see the most up-to-date and complete upstream and downstream information for any requirement—no matter the stage of systems development or how many siloed tools and teams it spans?

Live Traceability™ in Jama Connect enables you to do just that! Now you can manage requirements with complete traceability across the end-to-end systems development process for proven reduction in cycle time and improved product quality.

This enables the engineering process to be managed through data, and its performance improved in real time; dramatically reducing the risk of product delays, cost overruns, defects, rework, and recalls; and ultimately resulting in faster time to market.

In this video, we demonstrate how Jama Connect helps teams integrate with preferred best-of-breed tools to achieve Live Traceabilty™ across the end-to-end development cycle.

RELATED: The Essential Guide to Requirements Management and Traceability

Reuse & Sync

Struggling with scattered requirements and disconnected systems?

Teams often struggle to build on existing work when requirements and tests are spread across documents and systems. Lacking a live trace, they must manually identify and copy related content, increasing the risk of rework and gaps. Additionally, teams tend to lack visibility across efforts, causing necessary changes to not propagate across reuse content, potentially impacting quality and disconnecting product design efforts.

Jama Connect simplifies and enhances the process of reusing requirements and verifications by allowing you to copy selected content with its containers and its traced items. Synchronization ensures visibility and enables key use cases such as parallel product definition, common content libraries, and product variance.

In this video, we explain how your team can reduce time to market and improve quality by reusing and synchronizing requirements and other content in Jama Connect.

Review Center

Are complex review processes bogging down your development process?

Reviews play a key role in successful product development. Jama Connect’s Review Center streamlines the review process, saving valuable time and making reviews across teams and various stakeholders seamless! In this video, you will learn how to initiate a review, how to invite participants to a review, how users can complete tasks, provide feedback, and finish a review. You also see how moderators can view review activity, interact with feedback, publish revisions, compare review versions, and more.

In this video, we demonstrate a powerful and easy-to-use feature in Jama Connect, the Review Center.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Jama Connect Features in Five: Integrations Series

The #1 problem product engineering organizations face is complying with traceability requirements spanning siloed teams and tools. Jama Connect helps teams solve this by offering integrations with various other applications and tools via Jama Connect Interchange™ as well as Jira, Excel, Cameo, and more.

We are excited to announce our upcoming eight-part Jama Connect Features in Five integration video series demonstrating the best-of-breed tools that plug into Jama Connect for Live Traceability!

Integrations shown in this series will include:

  • Jira
  • Excel for Risk Management
  • GitHub
  • API Integration for Automated Tests
  • Test Rail
  • Cameo
  • Azure Dev Ops
  • Enterprise Architect

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