Product Development & Management

How to Overcome Development Challenges: Optimizing Review Cycles for Regulated Industries

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How to Overcome Development Challenges: Optimizing Review Cycles for Regulated Industries

The nature of regulated industries poses specific hurdles that demand strict procedures and careful consideration. Teams must navigate various difficulties, such as adhering to strict regulations and managing complicated relationships with stakeholders, to deliver top-notch products, software, and systems. Improving the review process is a critical approach for overcoming these challenges, promoting teamwork, enhancing decision-making, and expediting time to market. In this blog post, we delve into how streamlined review processes can help teams conquer development obstacles in regulated sectors.

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The Critical Role of Enhanced Review Cycle Processes

  • Ensuring Compliance with Regulations: In industries such as medical device & life sciences, aerospace & defense, and automotive, adherence to regulatory standards is of utmost importance. Through improved review procedures, all requirements and deliverables are thoroughly evaluated, reducing the possibility of non-compliance and associated penalties. Regular and thorough reviews also aid in the early detection and resolution of any issues during the development process
  • Fostering Efficient Collaboration: Development projects often involve the collaboration of diverse teams and external partners. Enhanced review processes establish a structured framework for effective collaboration, ensuring that all stakeholders can contribute and provide feedback efficiently. This cooperative approach leads to the creation of comprehensive and well-rounded solutions.
  • Expediting Development Timelines: Timeliness is crucial in regulated industries. Streamlined review processes can significantly reduce development timelines by swiftly identifying and addressing any issues that may arise. This minimizes the need for rework and helps teams stay on track, ultimately accelerating the time-to-market.
  • Enhancing Decision-Making: Enhanced review processes offer a holistic view of project progress and potential challenges, facilitating well-informed decision-making. By providing all relevant information to stakeholders, teams can make timely and well-founded decisions, aligning everyone towards a common goal.

“The review process is a lot quicker than it was before, it’s very efficient in Jama Connect. If we compare it to reviewing the spreadsheets and Word documents versus doing a review in Jama Connect Review Center, it’s about an 80% reduction in time, for sure.”
– Kurt Shuler, Vice President, Marketing – Arteris IP, “See How Arteris IP is Leveraging Jama Connect for Autonomous Vehicle Development”

Strategies for Enhancing Review Processes

  • Simplifying Review Processes: It is crucial to have well-defined and streamlined protocols in place for reviews to optimize the process. This includes setting specific review deadlines, using standardized templates, and clearly outlining the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved.
  • Utilizing Modern Technology: Innovative review tools like Jama Connect’s Review Center offer the ability for real-time collaboration and feedback. These tools allow for reviews to take place at different times, preventing delays and keeping the process moving forward.
  • Centralizing Documentation and Feedback: Having a centralized location for all review documents and feedback ensures that team members have access to the most up-to-date information. This promotes transparency and ensures that feedback and approvals are properly recorded and easily traceable, which is crucial for compliance audits.
  • Identifying and Removing Obstacles: Regularly evaluating review cycles to pinpoint any issues and implementing solutions such as automated notifications and reminders can help keep the review process on track. This proactive approach helps maintain progress and ensures timely completion of reviews.

“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.”

– Process Engineer, Aerospace & Defense  

The Benefits of Jama Connect®’s Review Center

Jama Connect®‘s Review Center provides an iterative, collaborative approach to reviewing requirements and tests in real-time. With Jama Connect’s Review Center, teams can:

  • Enable efficient and scalable reviews and shorten review cycles by up to 50%
  • Prioritize critical decisions and align stakeholders to improve response times, minimize meetings, and eliminate communication bottlenecks
  • Facilitate compliant reviews and approvals by creating a standardized review process, gaining formal approvals, and exporting to an auditable system of record
  • Engage unlimited stakeholders: Drive participation from buyers, suppliers, and partners across organizational boundaries for centralized definitions, input, and decisions
“Jama Connect allows us to centrally collect project documentation (requirements, product risks, test cases, etc) and efficiently review, release, and reuse the contents of these documents.”
– Vice President of Engineering, Medical Device & Life Sciences

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

Conclusion

Improving review procedures is a vital approach to overcoming challenges in regulated industries. When reviews are optimized, they not only ensure adherence to regulations, but also promote efficient teamwork, accelerate development timelines, and enhance decision-making. Jama Connect’s Review Center provides a robust solution for enhancing review processes, allowing for efficient and scalable reviews, aligning stakeholders, promoting compliant reviews, and engaging an unlimited number of participants. With Jama Connect’s Review Center capabilities, teams can streamline their review processes, resulting in the timely delivery of high-quality, compliant products that meet the stringent requirements of regulated sectors.

“We have achieved a significant ROI with Jama Connect in risk reduction and productivity gains: reuse is up 100%, rework is down 50%, requirements review cycle time is cut by 30% and audit preparation time is down 75%.”
– Kurt Shuler, Vice President, Marketing – Arteris IP, “See How Arteris IP is Leveraging Jama Connect for Autonomous Vehicle Development”

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

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