Tag Archive for: alm

Application Lifecycle Management

As products evolve, so must the application development process. Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is born from what used to be a slew of different functions—project management, requirements management, development, testing, quality assurance (QA), delivery, and support—working in siloed environments.  

The work of these disciplines depends on one another and needs to be conducted with continued collaboration to achieve maximum efficiency in the shortest timeframe.  

What is application lifecycle management?  

Application lifecycle management (ALM) integrates the people, processes, and tools involved with software application development from preliminary planning through end-of-life. This unification optimizes communication and collaboration among all groups responsible for application development. Benefits of Application Lifecycle Management include improved quality, increased efficiency, and seamless overall management and maintenance of products. 

Typically, ALM and PLM have been separate processes, each using their individual software solutions and tools. But with the near-omnipresent convergence of hardware and software in product development, the process is likely to evolve. 

Why is ALM important for development teams? 

Unifying previously disparate practices into a single process is an invaluable asset when it comes to creating complex software. That’s why ALM is important—it helps companies realize a multitude of benefits such as, enhancing visibility throughout the software life cycle, simplifying estimates to assist with budget management, increasing efficiency to get applications to market quicker, and strengthening product quality.  

Best practices, templates, and tools for application lifecycle management 

The most important best practice for application lifecycle management is to use the right tool for the job.  

If you’re a part of a growing team, a Requirements Traceability Matrix template can help your ALM process. At a minimum, an RTM can ensure that test cases are prepared and requirements are met.  

However, with complex application development — especially in regulated industries — it’s advisable to find an application lifecycle management tool.  

There are many benefits of using application lifecycle management tools compared to spreadsheets to manage the development of complex and regulated products. Purpose-built management tools can streamline the people, processes, and integrations that constitute the software development life cycle. Whereas there are a variety of risks of using spreadsheets when developing complex and regulated products.  

If you are looking for a tool to support your application portfolio management, there are many to choose from. To help organize the ALM process, be sure to find a management solution that: 

  • Is flexible regardless of development methodology 
  • Makes it easy to get started and administrate 
  • Enables collaboration throughout the life cycle 
  • Allows for integration with best-of-breed tools 
  • Offers excellent support 

Hearing what users say about ALM software is also an important checkpoint that should not be skipped.  

Key features needed in an application lifecycle management tool 

There are many features of application lifecycle management tools; it can be hard to know what’s important. Below are the top features to look for in an ALM tool. For even more help with selecting the right tool, look at our Requirements Management Buyer’s Guide. 

Requirements Management 

Requirements management is an integral part of any development, including software. However, there are many requirements management methodologies that can be employed—like waterfall or agile. Differing practices within the application development process usually means disparate best-of-breed tools to optimize activities. 

Some companies try to force organizations into one software platform in an attempt to achieve the benefits of end-to-end process visibility. Typically, this approach fails due to lack of adoption and the result is an overall decrease in productivity. Therefore, it is important that your ALM tool adapts to the development methodology your teams already use so they don’t have to change their workflow.

Tracking requirements throughout the lifecycle is critical to the success of the software delivered and ensures it meets the specifications set out to build.  Being able to link these requirements across the application lifecycle creates a digital thread. In Jama Connect®, this process is supported through Living Requirements™ Management.

This is essential for regulated industries and is a best practice for any complex application development. It reduces the risk of negative product outcomes while preserving engineering autonomy and productivity.  

This flexibility helps increase adoption and usage, thus allowing you to quickly realize the benefits of an ALM tool—increased collaboration, productivity, visibility, etc.   

Estimation and Planning 

ALM tools can help with project estimation and planning, however the development method they are designed for can vary. It’s important to choose a tool that can support both waterfall and agile development.  

For complex and regulated product development it’s also important to have an ALM tool with workflow functionality so you can set up a track to be followed systematically. 

Collaboration and Communication 

Successful development of complex applications requires top-notch communication and collaboration throughout the development life cycle. Out of context communications like email won’t cut it.  

Your ALM tool of choice must allow for information flow in real time so it’s never out of date, and be on record tied to the requirement or artifact it pertains to. This way visibility is upheld, and all parties know the latest information.  

Source Code Management 

While the coding aspect of software development is not regarded as a part of application lifecycle management, it is part of overall development. Therefore, the source code management functionality must be integrated into the ALM tool to ensure requirements traceability from definition through testing and defect resolution.  

As stated previously, software engineers should be able to choose their preferred coding software and still have it integrate with the ALM tool. Be sure to research ALM tool integration capabilities before selecting a management solution to ensure the tool is flexible.   

Testing and Quality Assurance 

Quality assurance is a leading factor in an ALM tool. What sets sophisticated ALM tools apart is the ability to truly deliver end-to-end traceability. This means it is imperative to connect requirements with test status and ensure all requirements are verified and validated.  

Best practice is to involve quality and testing teams earlier in the process to validate requirements and review and approve test plans. To achieve this goal, an ALM tool must make test case management a top priority.  

Top features of test management are the ability to monitor test progress with smart dashboards, perform both manual user-acceptance testing and support automated testing, trace failed tests to new and existing defects, reuse validated requirements, and integrate with your existing QA and testing ecosystem.   

Deployment or DevOps 

Like source code management, deployment and DevOps are not typically considered part of ALM, however, your ALM tool needs to integrate with DevOps tools and the continuous integration servers your teams are using for deployment. Furthermore, the dashboards and reports within the tool must have the ability to incorporate the data so full visibility is achievable.   

Version Control 

When using spreadsheets for ALM, version control can be a nightmare. An ALM tool, on the other hand, houses a complete history of changes made to the application. Smart ALM tools also feature personalized dashboards and reports. This is beneficial for decision making and invaluable for regulatory compliance.  

Ongoing Support and Maintenance 

This feature of ALM tools is not to be overlooked, as keeping customers happy is the lifeblood of any business. Support is what separates good apps from cherished ones. Also, customer feedback is often the fuel for new ideas and features. Be sure to choose an ALM platform with premier support.  

Project and Portfolio Management 

Full visibility into the application development lifecycle is, of course, one of the main goals of an ALM tool. With so many moving parts it can be hard to know where to look and when. That’s why it’s crucial that your management tool have custom reports and smart dashboards to easily view strategic project metrics.  

Additionally, you may already use a Project Portfolio Management tool, in which case, an ALM tool that can easily integrate will be an important feature to seek out.  

Current and future trends of application lifecycle management 

One leading trend of application lifecycle management is that software and hardware are continuously converging. Smart devices are both hardware and software—they cannot be distinguished as only one or the other—and must be developed simultaneously.  

ALM is used by software teams to produce applications and systems. These teams typically use agile development methodologies. Whereas Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is used in manufacturing industries to build hardware and physical systems. Historically, many of these teams have used a waterfall development methodology. The main difference between PLM and ALM lies is in what is being built.  

Again, as products advance, it changes the way in which they are created. The best way to get ahead of this trend is to use a lifecycle management tool that is configurable and enables toolchain integration. That way, no matter the development methodology, testing tools, bug-tracking software, etc., the platform can adapt to the required workflow regardless of what is being built.  

Jama Connect does exactly that. It is a web-based application that supports complex products with both hardware and software components. Jama Connect is a forward-thinking solution in that it supports any development model and can conform to the workflow that makes most sense for the teams using it. With standard and custom API integrations and popular third-party integration hubs, teams can work in familiar tools and still ensure traceability throughout the development process. 

See how Jama Connect can improve your ALM process by downloading the solution overview.  

 



ALM Software

We’re proud to be kicking off 2021 with accolades from people who know us best – our customers. 

Today, we’re proud to announce that G2 Crowd has named us a Leader among all available ALM solutions. “We are deeply committed to client success as evidenced by legions of former users bringing us into their new companies and the enthusiasm exhibited by our product reviews,” said Marc Osofsky, chief executive officer of Jama Software. 

Why Did Customers Select Jama Connect as a Leader?

This award was based on over 75 customer reviews with a majority of customers giving Jama Connect a 5 star rating. Reviewers praised Jama Connect for everything from an intuitive and easy-to-use interface to immense cost savings, and almost always touched on product development process improvement. Here are two reviews that stood out to us:

“Jama Connect is one of the best requirements tools out there. We save a lot of time and effort in development and product management by using the well made collaboration functionalities, especially in these current COVID times, “
– Verified Review from an Olaf P, Requirements Manager at an Enterprise Company
“Seven years of success with Jama Connect. The review system is easy to use and encourages secondary users to be involved in the requirements process. We’re developing traditional waterfall requirement documents. Being able to export requirements to our test department’s tools has been really helpful.”
– Verified Review from Mark S., Manager at a Mid-Market Company

 

How Does G2 Determine ALM Software Solutions Award Winners?

G2 ranks products based on two factors: customer satisfaction (through user reviews) and market presence — with market share, vendor size, and social impact all considered. To achieve the Leader ranking in the Application Lifecycle Management Tools category, an organization must be rated highly by G2 users and have substantial market presence.

Customer satisfaction is not arbitrary, either. G2 bases customer satisfaction off the following factors (in order of importance):

  • Customer satisfaction with end user-focused product attributes based on user reviews
  • Popularity and statistical significance based on the number of reviews received by G2
  • Quality of reviews received (reviews that are more thoroughly completed will be weighted more heavily)
  • Age of reviews (more-recent reviews provide relevant and up-to-date information that is reflective of the current state of a product)
  • Customers’ satisfaction with administration-specific product attributes based on user reviews
  • Overall customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS) based on ratings by G2 users

Each month, 2.5 million visitors trust G2 for buyer guidance and insights, and users continue to rank Jama Connect as a trusted, modern solution for innovative engineering teams. As noted by G2, “The Grid® represents the democratic voice of real software users, rather than the subjective opinion of one analyst. G2 rates products from the ALM Suites category algorithmically based on data sourced from product reviews shared by G2 users and data aggregated from online sources and social networks.”

From all of us here at Jama Software, we are proud to have been named a leader and honored to have the privilege to continue serving our innovative and revolutionary customers. We have a lot of exciting things in the works, so stay tuned to see what’s next from our solution, team, and customers.

To learn more about G2’s Winter 2021 awards and read more reviews of Jama Connect, head to G2.com.

SEE MORE REVIEWS

ALM Software

Earlier this year, G2 named Jama Connect a High Performer in ALM Software Solutions and commended our platform for having the easiest setup and easiest admin. We’re proud to say that we have again been awarded this rank in the G2 Fall 2020 Awards, while increasing both our customer satisfaction rankings and our market presence.

This award has special meaning to the team here at Jama Software because it’s awarded by those who know us best – our customers.

Why Did Customers Select Jama Connect as a High-Performance Award Winner?

This award was based on over 70 customer reviews with an overwhelming majority of customers giving the Jama Connect ALM solution a 4 or 5 star rating. Reviewers praised Jama Connect for everything from an intuitive and easy-to-use interface to immense cost savings, and almost always touched on process improvement. Here are two reviews that stood out to us:

“Jama moved our requirements and test processes out of the 1990s. The collaboration tools have had the most impact. We are able to reduce our number of meetings and save less time waiting on feedback loops and herding email chains. The reporting capabilities has really shown where we have holes in our processes that need improvement. [Jama Connect has improved] collaboration and getting the stakeholders to make comments directly on requirements vs. vague emails. We are moving into having our dev teams document their tech specs and unit tests, making this a full ALM tool.”
– Verified Review from an Administrator in Legal Services 
“Seven years of success with Jama Connect. The review system is easy to use and encourages secondary users to be involved in the requirements process. We’re developing traditional waterfall requirement documents. Being able to export requirements to our test department’s tools has been really helpful.”
– Verified Review from Mark S., Manager at a Mid-Market Company

How Does G2 Classify ALM Software Solutions?

According to the G2 2020 ALM Award Winner’s report, to qualify as an ALM suite, a product must:

  • Possess tools for requirements management
  • Possess tools for software development and testing
  • Provide team collaboration features
  • Provide release management features
  • Provide tools for governance and maintenance

How Does G2 Determine ALM Software Solutions Award Winners?

G2 ranks products based on two factors: customer satisfaction (through user reviews) and market presence—with market share, vendor size, and social impact all considered. To achieve the High Performer ranking in the Application Lifecycle Management Tools category, a product scores high in the user review category but doesn’t yet have the market presence of a product in the leader quadrant.

That could change soon for Jama Connect. But as noted above, our market presence is continuing to expand quarter over quarter. Each month, 2.5 million visitors trust G2 for buyer guidance and insights, and users continue to rank Jama Connect as a trusted, revolutionary tool for engineering teams. As Jama Software Chief Product Officer Josh Turpen notes, “G2 goes above and beyond to be a trusted online resource for businesses everywhere, so an award like this helps get our name out there.”

Other companies that joined the ranks in the High Performers category include Polarion ALM and Micro Focus ALM, though both ranked lower in customer satisfaction.

From all of us here at Jama Software, we are proud to accept this award and honored to have the privilege to continue serving our innovative and revolutionary customers. We have a lot of exciting things in the works, so stay tuned to see what’s next from our solution, team, and customers. To learn more about G2’s Fall 2020 awards and read more reviews of Jama Connect, head to G2.com.

SEE MORE REVIEWS

Application Lifecycle Management

Jama Software kicked off 2020 with accolades from people who know us best — customers.

Software customer review site G2 awarded Jama Connect™ the Enterprise High Performer rating for Winter 2020 in the Application Lifecycle Management Tools category.

The product also received Easiest Setup and Easiest Admin from G2.

“These G2 awards have special meaning” says Jama Software Chief Product Officer Josh Turpin, “because we know they’re based on customer satisfaction reviews from people who actually use our product and know it well.”

Jama Connect Leads with Superior Customer Ratings


Hundreds of thousands of employees at companies worldwide go to G2 to write detailed, honest assessments of the products they use every day. Other products in the Application Lifecycle Management Tools category, including IBM Engineering Workflow Management and IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next, had relatively low customer satisfaction scores despite a higher market presence because they lacked enough positive reviews.  

Jama Connect users noted how the product simplified management of complex systems: 

“Very easy and intuitive user interface…We have a very complex product with multiple (10+) subsystems, all interconnected in many degrees of complexity. The ability to maintain requirements and the trace linkages for all is a great benefit for us as we face auditing on a regular basis.” – Engineer Product Manager, Medical Device Company (51-100 employees) 

“Jama made creating product requirements simple. When you have a complex product and you need to work collaboratively with the team, you have one place to do it, virtually accessible from anywhere. It starts with a project and then you have a nice and friendly User Interface. – Senior Software Development Manager, Mid-Market (501-1000 employees) 

Reviewers also specified the ways Jama Connect helped them do their job better:  

“Using Jama Connect has provided the ability to perform detailed impact assessments from a single source, expediting the process and reducing the mistakes made between disparate data sources.” – Manager, Medical Device Company, Enterprise (10,001+ employees)

“Jama is fantastic for the collaboration between engineering domains. Requirements can be cascaded down and traced from all abstraction levels” - User in Automotive Mid-Market (201-500 employees)

How G2 Determines Award Winners

G2 ranks products based on two factors: customer satisfaction through user reviews and market presence, with market share, vendor size, and social impact all considered. To achieve the High Performer ranking in the Application Lifecycle Management Tools category, a product scores high in the user review category but doesn’t yet have the market presence of a product in the leader quadrant.

That could change soon for Jama Connect. Each month, 2.5 million visitors trust G2 for buyer guidance and insights. As Jama Software Chief Product Officer Josh Turpin notes, “G2 goes above and beyond to be a trusted online resource for businesses everywhere, so an award like this helps get our name out there.”

To learn about the Winter 2020 awards and read more Jama Connect reviews, visit G2.com. 

We are pleased to announce that Jama Connect™ was selected as a Top-Rated Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Tool for 2019 by TrustRadius.

The annual Top-Rated ALM Tool award showcases today’s top-of-the-line products in ALM based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. These awards make the voice of the market the primary decider into the industry’s best ALM software.

According to TrustRadius, the Top-Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are never influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer.

“We are proud to be recognized as a top ALM tool by TrustRadius alongside Jira Software from Atlassian,” said Jama Software CEO Scott Roth. “We’ve worked hard to deliver the best requirements, risk, and test management platform available on the market, and are honored to receive this recognition from such a highly regarded source.”

Enterprise Product Development Requires Modern ALM Tools

Though customers noted a variety of features and capabilities as the reason they rated Jama Connect so favorably in the ALM software category — end-to-end traceability, Review Center, and ease of use among the most commonly mentioned — it all came down to the superiority of the product.

“Jama Connect has won a Top-Rated award for application lifecycle management software based directly on feedback from their customers,” said Megan Headley, VP of Research at TrustRadius. “Reviewers praise the product’s core traceability and defect logging capabilities, and its overall superiority for requirements management and QA across development stages.”

And while TrustRadius boasts dozens of verified reviews from happy Jama Software customers — over 70% coming from large enterprises — one was highlighted in the ALM award announcement.

“Through Jama, we have been able to fully document our functional and technical requirements for multiple products/projects. Jama allows us to go through change cycle reviews with our client to show them the changes we have made during a cycle for their approval or clarification,” said Thai Trinh, Senior Business Analyst for an IT and services company. “This gives us accountability and traceability that could not be achieved in other more manual requirement gathering methods… For any project in which you need to document detailed requirements, especially software development, Jama would be well suited for use.”

Jama Connect Shares the Award with Jira Software

With both platforms earning an average of over 8/10 stars, TrustRadius actually named two award winners in the ALM tool category: Jama Connect and Jira Software.

Jira Software, the leading project management software, was rightly recognized for its unique organizational schema such as stories and epics, and overall flexible workflow, making it an ideal ALM tool for managing the work of developers and fostering collaboration among teams. Many organizations accelerate product development by connecting Jama Software and Jira Software for a bi-directional information flow of requirements and tasks.

The Future is Bright for Our Customers

All of us at Jama Software take pride in winning this award, but it wouldn’t be possible without our customers.

Over the coming months and years, we will be deeply focused on making improvements across our product line, adding new features, expanding our integration partners, and broadening our services offerings. These steps will ensure our customers have the most effective platform for requirements, risk, and test management available.

“Our customers are at the forefront of every decision we make, and we’re dedicated to providing them with a premier platform, outstanding customer service, and seamless integrations with other best-of-breed tools,” said Roth.

See how Jama Connect stacks up against competitors in our eBook, “Selecting the Right Product Development Platform.”

 

In last week’s blog on Enterprise Collaborative Engineering we illustrated the concept of ECE using The Beatles’ Paul McCartney and John Lennon song writing team in connected collaboration.  We highlighted the exponential value of including the enterprise in George’s contribution to the song writing process and the speed and quality which dramatically improved the construction process (Eleanor Rigby was a masterpiece of brilliant lyrics yet with simple music).

For review, we define Enterprise Collaborative Engineering as the following:

  • ECE connects cross-functional roles across your Enterprise
    It’s recognizing the behavioral power of expanded collaboration. Enterprise in ECE means expanding the list of roles (Business stakeholders, product owners, SCRUM masters, software developers, hardware and electrical engineers, build manager, and operations).
  • ECE breaks down barriers, adds agility, and virtualizes reviews
    It means providing product development tools which enable expanded, connected collaboration.
  • ECE positively affects your Business
    It enables faster decision loops all through the product lifecycle. ECE has proven business results (50% faster decision time, 43% defect reduction, and > 20% reduction in design cycle time).

In this post, we will look at applying ECE to the product lifecycle. How does ECE speed innovation with high quality?

There are two building-blocks to ECE.  Core ALM and Enterprise (connected) Collaboration.  Core ALM alone brings business benefits.  But as we will see below, adding Enterprise Collaboration exponentially increases business benefits.

Core Application Lifecycle Management:

The first building-block of ECE is Core ALM (see Figure #1).  ALM is the “engineering” component of ECE.    Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) supports your Business Analysts, Developers, and Testers). ALM generates the engineering outputs.  Core ALM is implemented by Waterfall, Iterative, Agile or some hybrid work flow.  The BA’s or Product Owners write requirements, Epics, or User Stories.   The developers write software, and the testers validate and verify products and features.  ALM alone solves some business problems.  It makes the hard questions which affect delivery easy:

“What is the impact of this requirements change? “If we remove this feature, what is the impact on testing?”  “What risks have we introduced by changing this feature?”  “Will we deliver on time?”

screen-shot-2017-02-08-at-4-35-58-pm

Figure #1 – Core ALM

Enterprise (connected) Collaboration:

The second building block of ECE is Enterprise Collaboration.  It’s applying the power of connected collaboration to dramatically improve Core ALM.  The business benefits are significant and exponential over just Core ALM (metrics represent individual Jama customer results).

ECE goes way beyond Core ALM’s roles to include your customers, business stakeholders, hardware and electrical engineers, DBAs, and Operations. This inclusivity gathers critical points of view and enables connected collaboration from all of these roles. This improves quality and delivery (e.g.  33% reduction in requirements related defects).

ECE gathers connected role inputs across the lifecycle, from concept to launch. Core ALM alone considers limited front and middle lifecycle activity.  ECE adds in the Customer, Operations, DBA, others throughout the entire lifecycle. Collecting inputs from across the lifecycle positively affects decisions and improves product quality and delivery.  Companies are achieving 20% reduction in design time.

There are also exponential business benefits of adding enterprise collaboration. Connecting the expanded role set causes significantly faster decisions (e.g.  requirements get written faster).  But connecting all of those roles directly to the engineering artifacts also causes dramatically improved quality.  Organizations are achieving 33% reduction stakeholder response time.  Others are gaining 50% faster decision loops.  The proven results are speed and quality.

Figure #2 – Core ALM + Enterprise Connected Collaboration

Figure #2 – Core ALM + Enterprise Connected Collaboration

In summary, we see that Core ALM is essential and drives business value.  But adding Enterprise (connected) Collaboration significantly improves engineering speed and quality exponentially over just Core ALM.  The business benefits of ECE are measurable and proven.

Origins of Enterprise Collaborative Engineering (ECE):

Jama pioneered ECE.  We enhanced our ALM capabilities (requirements/test traceability and ReUse) with new and innovative collaboration features for the Enterprise.  The Jama Review Center for example, dramatically speeds requirements review with significant business benefits for our customers.

To learn more about how Jama’s ECE is helping large enterprises like Spaceflight achieve high efficiency, read our case study.

There’s no escaping that the more exciting and fast-paced the product you’re developing is, the more challenging it is for decision makers to access the information they need to move quickly. In this complex workspace no one person, single team, or discipline can make all decisions alone. Modern product development requires working with product data a bit differently – everything from high level requirements to test cases need to be handled more iteratively, collaboratively, and even across multiple development tools. While this trend is still evolving, managing networked product data doesn’t need to be a burden.

In fact, Jama data is most powerful when it’s connected. Jama houses all the essential context needed to drive an organization, including the core requirements defining the “what” and “why” of what you’re building. However, that data becomes more powerful and actionable when it’s part of an end-to-end picture of your product delivery process. That means anchoring your requirements upstream to your market analysis, team goals and company objectives as well as downstream to all development tasks, tests, and statuses from outside tools such as Jira, Rally, VersionOne, TFS, and HPQC. Here’s one example of how that might look in a Jama relationship diagram:

tih-1

Integrations make the whole network of product data available in Jama, and traceability makes sure that data is meaningfully mapped to reflect how teams think and work. Together, when changes inevitably need to be made, it’s possible to see who is impacted and move swiftly with context powering your decisions.

The NEW Tasktop Integration Hub makes these integrations simpler, particularly at scale. While this data connectivity is hugely valuable, setting up an integration is a deliberate and sometimes tedious exercise. If you have ever set up an integration, you likely have experienced the complex, interrelated, non-obvious choices required to map distinct systems together. That’s why I’m pleased to announce that Jama users now can take advantage of a new integration hub that takes this challenge head on. The Tasktop Integration Hub (TIH) is built to perform at enterprise scale, and designed to make integration setup intuitive, easily repeatable, and manageable over time as your teams’ data volume and complexity grows.

tih-2

 

While the increasing complexity of product delivery is daunting, the tools at a product developer’s disposal, like Jama, are becoming more sophisticated, too. Jama is holding true to our mission to simplify complex product development. We are continuing to evolve how we collect, connect, and share the information decision makers need across their tool ecosystem. More capabilities to come!

tih-3

 

To learn more about the TIH, and how successful teams are keeping their data connected:

  • If you’re new to Jama and integrations, contact our sales team to learn more.
  • If you’re an existing Jama and integrations user, please contact your customer success manager to learn more about taking advantage of the new TIH.

When I joined Jama as CEO earlier this year, I was excited to become part of a team that was passionate about our customers and solving their problems. The companies we get to work with are a major reason I wanted to join Jama to begin with — it’s an honor and a thrill to partner with them as they build products that will change their industries and the economy. I know I’m not alone in that enthusiasm: As I met individually with every employee during my first three months on the job, over and over again “our customers” was a top reason people cited for coming to work here.

Market Forces

Our customers span an array of critical industries — aerospace, financial and consulting services, medical devices, government, semiconductor, consumer electronics and automotive, to name a few. I’ve now had the privilege of meeting with dozens of them, and I’ve consistently heard them describe the following market forces in play:

The new generation of smart, connected products is increasing competition.

For the first time ever, when consumers buy something new, whether a phone, a thermostat or a car, they expect its capabilities to improve over time. They expect new features over the lifetime of the product, automatic fixes where there were previously recalls, and unprecedented options for customization. With each release of Jama, we’re rolling out new features and improvements that focus on enabling innovation for our customers. We invested in building our REST API to add more even customization and extend the functionality of our solution.

Increasing complexity and new regulation add new challenges.

Development cycles are more complicated than before, requiring close coordination of hardware and software teams, often using different tools and methodologies. Connected products introduce new security risks, often into industries that were previously immune to regulatory compliance. As software becomes an increasingly critical component of new cars, the automotive industry has responded with new compliance regulations such as ISO26262, and so have we. This year we achieved ISO 26262 fit-for-purpose certification by TÜV SÜD to give our customers confidence as they navigate the path to compliance in their product development process.

Systems development teams require a purpose-built product development platform and must take a continuous engineering approach to create products for the modern world.

ALM was built for software, PLM was built for hardware, but today’s product teams require a unified set of capabilities. Teams need contextual, ongoing collaboration and a single source of truth for their data and requirements. In June, we released Jama 8, kicking off a series of releases that will build on our core traceability and collaboration features. We’re also investing in our product ecosystem with the launch of our Partner Alliance Program, working with best-of-breed solution providers to better serve our customers.

At face value, these challenges are daunting. But we get to see our customers overcome them each day through disciplined, modern management of their development processes, which lets them better capitalize on industry trends. As they work to deliver the life- and economy-critical products that are going to change the way we live, we’re glad to be their partners and are eager to foster their success every step of the way.

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Jama CEO Eric Winquist

Jama CEO Eric Winquist


This week Jama CEO Eric Winquist and company head north from Portland to ALM Forum in Seattle, April 1-3. Jama is proud to be Gold Sponsor of the three day conference dedicated to sharing knowledge for success within the fast-growing Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) industry. If you’re attending ALM Forum, please join us for Eric’s breakout session “Modern Product Delivery” on Wednesday, April 2 from 2:00-3:00pm. Eric will share fresh market data about current ALM trends and challenges. He’ll examine how large enterprises building complex products are speeding application delivery time and increasing quality to drive real product innovation.
Visit our Modern Product Delivery page for a preview of Eric’s talk and to get resources for managing the biggest challenges in product delivery: speed, complexity and misalignment. We hope to see you in Seattle this week. Keep an eye out for the Jama coffee carts and stop by booth #16 to say hello. We look forward to hearing about how you’re rethinking ALM in 2014.
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