Jama Software, a product delivery company evolving the way organizations conceive, build and deliver products to market, today announces availability of the Jama Product Delivery Platform. The solution connects business decision-makers with product development teams via enterprise social tools that sit on top of the company’s flagship collaborative requirements-management solution. Jama extends product innovation out of development to include all phases of the product delivery cycle, from concept to launch.

“Product delivery involves everyone in the organization. Executives, product managers, designers, engineers, sales and end customers are invested in building and delivering great products. Each of these people needs clarity into what the company is building and why,” said Eric Winquist, CEO of Jama. “After someone comes up with the big idea, it’s tossed over the wall to development. Even with the latest technology and agile processes, the business still feels disconnected and frustrated that they don’t have a voice. We are fixing that.”

The spring release of Jama tackles misalignment between project teams and business stakeholders, one of the root causes of product failure. The capabilities in the release offer the following benefits:

• Engages stakeholders where they already work: Jama brings in people across the business with workflows familiar to them. By using common social constructs, including @mentions, #hashtags and a collaboration stream, the product team can elevate critical and time-sensitive decisions to the right people and let them respond in real time from wherever they are — via email, direct from a mobile device or the collaboration stream. With one click, business users can participate without needing prior access to the platform.
• Keeps conversations connected to the project: Often the ideas, whiteboard sessions, drawings and conversations — critical to product delivery — stay locked in the inbox and disconnected from the work. With Jama as the system of record for all activity tied to the end product, key decisions are clearly identified and recorded in context. Weeks or months later, specific design choices are traceable back to the initial thread and business objectives stay at the forefront of development.
• Simplifies informal review: One of the major problems with quality is not getting feedback during early design activities when changes are easy and inexpensive to implement. Jama, which first introduced collaborative requirements management, applies the same principles to ad-hoc discussions enabling frequent, informal collaboration and review across the product delivery cycle. This enables team members to pull in their peers to discuss and make decisions about requirements, test cases, and other details before they are formally reviewed.

Jama continues to expand the value of enterprise social software to solve a specific, and critical, business problem. By having real-time conversations about projects in the same place where the work takes place, Jama users can associate development changes and issues with potential business impact.