Traceability

5 Ways Jama Connect Makes Traceability Easy

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When our customers move from managing requirements in isolated documents to using a collaborative requirements management solution, they’re better-equipped to conduct impact analysis and ensure full test coverage and traceability throughout the development process.

Managing complex requirements necessitates that information be visible and accessible to all team members at all times. You also have to make sure that all this information is connected in a way that is relevant and comprehensible to your teams. This helps ensure that you’re building what you set out to build, that it fulfills your customers’ expectations, and that it’s safe and compliant.

In order to get a full picture of what’s been built and if it’s on track, it’s crucial to build connections between data, as well as to map the conversations and decisions associated with each requirement.

In this post, we’ll explore how some of our customers have realized these results using Jama Connect™.

Traceability is Essential to Requirements Management

With everything you’re managing day-to-day, the last thing you need is a tool that takes just as much time and effort to learn and use as writing and managing the requirements themselves. A requirements management solution should make your life easier, and it should be easy to roll out to your team. Moreover, the solution should help you step back and look at your entire product or system as it’s being built, see all of the connections, and easily identify where work is needed.

Our Jama Professional Services consultants often hear from customers facing the inherent challenges of complex systems that establishing and managing traceability in Jama Connect is much easier than in any other solution they’ve tried.

Here are five ways to create relationships, account for full test coverage, and manage traceability throughout the development process in Jama Connect

1. Build a framework for properly linking artifacts with relationship rules

Creating meaningful connections between artifacts is vital to having that all-important big picture view. With relationship rules, you specify the proper relationships and how to implement them, while also freeing up your team’s time to focus on building and managing requirements.

2. Find out who is connected to an item and easily communicate with connected users in the Collaboration Stream

Let’s say you notice that something is wrong with the way a requirement is written, and it needs to be adjusted. Jama makes it easy to identify not only everyone who is involved with that requirement, but also everyone involved with impacted requirements. Using the Collaboration Stream, you can quickly post the issue for these connected users, who then receive a notification and can respond quickly —without anyone needing to book a conference room.

3. Determine gaps in your test coverage quickly and easily with Trace View

A critical piece of assuring quality is being able to see where gaps lie in your test coverage. Jama Connect’s Trace View identifies those gaps by leveraging the relationships your team has created to give you a holistic view of where work is still needed.

4. Identify high-level impact across your project using suspect links

If a system-level requirement changes, it could dramatically impact the quality of your product. By using the suspect links feature in Jama Connect, you can see at a glance what other items are impacted by changes and quickly assess whether additional changes need to be made downstream.

5. Understand how product features are connected or share IP using Reuse and Sync

Complex systems make for complicated connections between individual systems and products. Jama Connect allows you to share crucial pieces of information across product lines, compare these connections at a glance, and align them with the click of a button using the Reuse and Sync feature.

Managing traceability in complex product and systems development is challenging, but it’s essential for ensuring product quality, on-time and on-budget delivery, and alignment between customer expectations and the final deliverable. That’s why you need the right product development platform to help you achieve traceability and reap the benefits.

For more strategies for establishing traceability in product development, download the whitepaper “Better Product Development: 5 Tips for Traceability.”

 

Jama Software
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