Integrations

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Jama Connect Interchange™ – What Sets Us Apart

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Jama Connect Features in Five: Jama Connect Interchange – What Sets Us Apart

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, Mario Maldari, Director of Solutions Architect at Jama Software – will demonstrate the Jama Connect to Jira integration via Jama Connect Interchange™.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Mario Maldari: Hello. My name is Mario Maldari and I’m the Director of solution architecture here at Jama Software. Today we’ll be discussing the Jama Connect to Jira integration via our Jama Connect Interchange. We’ll be focusing on some specific advantages and differentiators that our integration provides for our clients. These advantages provide added value to our integration and allow our clients to better meet the needs of their process and ultimately speed up their development time with improved quality.

Let’s start in Jama Connect’s Live Trace Explorer™ and analyze gaps in coverage between system requirements and user stories. We can easily drill down into the trace view and identify gaps within our coverage. Once the gaps are identified, we can create new user stories to satisfy the coverage and improve our traceability score. Let’s go ahead and do that.

You’ll now see the gap in coverage for this particular item has been satisfied and is no longer being flagged by the tool. One unique aspect of our Jira integration is that a user can configure the synchronization interval. It can range from 15 seconds to up to 24 hours. This built-in flexibility allows for the integration to be customized to meet the needs of many different process flows and organizational needs.

RELATED: Jama Connect Interchange™ for Software and Product Development Teams: Live Traceability Realized

Maldari: Navigating back to the user story that we just created in Jama Connect, you will now see an integration URL has been populated to the corresponding user story that was just created in Jira. In this case, the synchronization was quick, 15 seconds. Any subsequent update made to the item in Jira will synchronize and reflect back in Jama Connect with the same frequency. This way the two tools are always kept in sync and there is essentially no lag time.

Another major differentiation that our integration provides is the ability to create conditional rules for the integration. This allows users to be very specific about conditions for the creation and synchronization. They do not have to worry about the burden and overhead of sinking their entire project. They can be very specific regarding the conditions.
As an example, imagine a process that dictates that a new user story in Jama Connect will only get created in Jira when the Jira status in Jama Connect is set to do. This provides the requirements manager a level of process control where they can review the user stories and determine which ones and when they should be created in Jira.

In the Jama Connect Interchange configuration, if I navigate to the creation rule tab, I can see that there is a rule for user story creation. It’s configured to be triggered when the Jira status is set to do. I can add any number of rules and conditions based on my particular process flow. This allows for customization at a lower level and does not require the entire project to be synchronized.
Now let’s see how this works in Jama Connect. Utilizing Jama Connect’s List View, I can see which stories do not currently have a Jira status field set. I can review these and determine that I would like them to be created and synchronized to my Jira project. I can utilize the bulk edit feature and set the status for multiple items at a time.

RELATED: How to Achieve Live Traceability™ with Jira® for Software Development Teams

Maldari: Because of the conditional rule I have set in my Jama Connect Interchange settings, all three of these user stories will be created in Jira and participate in synchronization. You will see that the Jira URL has now been populated and the corresponding item has been created in Jira. This is just an example, but you can imagine how this flexibility can be applied across your projects and specific to your attributes.

Another important distinction to note is how relationships in Jama Connect and Jira are maintained through the integration. This allows for a more holistic, contextual view of how requirements and user stories relate outside the direct linkage of the integration. For example, as a developer in Jira, I may want to have a reference to how the requirements relate to upstream and downstream links. By choosing a relationship type and performing a field mapping, I’m able to get this reference to display as web links in Jira. As a developer in Jira, this allows me to get a sense for the overall context of the traceability.

In this example, a developer will see a user story come into their queue, and they will have a web link reference to the upstream and downstream requirements in Jama Connect. This provides them with additional context while working on developing the user story. They are even able to navigate directly to those items in Jama Connect for further detail.

One of our core philosophies at Jama Software is making our tools easy to use and therefore easy to adopt and maintain. Our integration to Jira is no exception. The user interface is point and click and the field mapping has intelligence built in that does most of the work for you. It’s also worth noting that we do not require you to be a Jama Connect administrator to set up, configure, and utilize our integration. Jama Connect Interchange also provides detailed event logging, which allows IT teams to monitor events and current status of the configured integrations.

As you can see, the Jama Connect to Jira integration offers teams a robust set of features with configuration options to meet various organizational needs. This flexibility and ease of use combined with specific well-thought-out functionality sets us apart from other requirement tools in Jira integrations. To find out more about our Jama Connect to Jira integration through our Jama Connect Interchange, please reach out to your customer success manager or visit our website today at jamasoftware.com

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

Mario Maldari
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