Tag Archive for: Jama Connect Platform

This image shows a car, which represents a software defined vehicle (SDV)

In this blog, we recap a section of our whitepaper, “Strategies for Mitigating Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Development Risks and Reducing Costly Recalls” – Click HERE to read it in its entirety.

Strategies for Mitigating Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Development Risks and Reducing Costly Recalls

Reduce the risks of product rework and recalls by using tools that enhance the efficiency and accuracy of requirements management and aid in compliance with UL 4600, the Standard for Safety for the Evaluation of Autonomous Products.

The shift to software defined vehicles (SDVs) marks a pivotal change in the automotive industry’s journey toward full autonomy. Initially, there was a rush toward developing fully autonomous vehicles, but the complexity of this task led the industry to adopt a more gradual, phased approach. This market transition has given rise to SDVs, but unlike traditional vehicles, which remained largely unchanged after purchase and are based on dated architecture topologies, vehicle OEM’s can now scale their software investments and simplify and optimize the vehicle architecture. This has benefits not only for the developer — resulting in a reduced total cost of ownership, potential acceleration of development, and improved safety and security — but also for the consumer in the form of increased choice, new business models, and post-sales updates and fixes.

Improving product and software development processes and the tools that support them can more effectively enhance safety and security standards while mitigating the risk of costly midcycle rework and after-sales recalls.

In 2023, there were over 300 recalls affecting more than 25 million vehicles, with costs potentially reaching millions of dollars per recall.

The automotive industry has advanced significantly from even a decade ago. Once-basic features, like touchscreen navigation, have evolved into sophisticated connectivity options, voice assistance, app ecosystems, and more. These changes bring several development challenges, including:

Managing increased software complexity

As vehicles become more software defined, managing multiple software components provided by many different vendors that perform entirely different functions increases complexity. For instance, an electronic control unit might operate the antilock braking system, while a cockpit domain controller is responsible for a very different task. In a software defined vehicle these distinct software systems must work seamlessly across the vehicle without issues, adding further complexity to an already challenging development cycle.

Ensuring functional safety and security compliance

With increased complexity, automotive companies face additional challenges in keeping up with safety and security standards and the associated regulatory compliance. The development community has relied on ISO 26262 for many years as the required functional safety standard. But, while it has historically served as an excellent baseline, the standard did not account for software defined vehicles, autonomous vehicles, or many of the new use cases.

Standards are evolving to keep up, and new ones, such as UL 4600, have been created that directly tie to autonomous vehicles. However, these standards continue to require companies to build requirements, test those requirements, and demonstrate that they have done everything possible to build a safe and secure product.

The process is complex with SDVs, especially when considering the hundreds of millions of lines of code involved. Companies must show that no faulty code exists and that they have not inadvertently introduced back doors that could create security issues or conditions that could violate a safety goal. As a result, there is a need to reconsider old processes and tools for requirements management to meet the current development environment and support mitigating potential risks.

Difficulty in meeting accelerated timelines

The pressure to deliver products and software faster is a significant challenge. Technology evolves rapidly, and no sooner have you developed a vehicle than consumer needs and opportunities emerge, leaving you to redesign to keep up with the market, differentiate, and stand out.

However, meeting accelerated timelines can conflict with maintaining quality and compliance, making it critical to strike the right balance. Adopting tools that allow for automation and faster processes can help keep up with these demands while aligning with safety requirements and standards. As more and more companies adopt an Agile development methodology, it’s increasingly important that the associated development tools do not stifle the benefits that Agile can offer. One great example is the concept of Traceable Agile™ that facilitates instantaneous, in-cycle insight into coverage for Agile development teams.

RELATED: A Guide to Road Vehicle Cybersecurity According to ISO 21434

Managing the dramatic increase of third-party software

Advancements in automotive development have led original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to source software from multiple vendors. Integrating this level of diverse software while avoiding safety and security issues can be challenging. Now, you not only have to integrate hardware from various suppliers but also manage a massive software bill of materials (BOM) from different vendors, ensuring that everything works seamlessly together.

You also need to ensure that you’re not introducing bugs due to incompatibilities between systems, which can cause unexpected glitches, security vulnerabilities and safety issues. These are very expensive, can potentially delay product launches, and create negative brand impact.

Often, hundreds or even thousands of software elements come together, with tens of millions of lines of code. Ensuring that all these elements work together while remaining safe and secure, and meeting consumer expectations for a modern vehicle, is critical.

Four Major Challenges with Software Defined Vehicles

1. Managing increased software complexity. The industry is shifting quickly due to the integration of software in vehicles, which presents challenges in effectively and efficiently developing and deploying SDV’s.

2. Ensuring functional safety and security compliance. Automotive companies face challenges meeting safety and security standards and regulatory compliance, particularly with complex software systems.

3. Difficulty meeting accelerated timelines. The pressure to deliver products faster in the SDV space is a key challenge.

4. Managing the dramatic increase of third-party software. OEMs are sourcing software from multiple vendors and integrating this level of diversity while avoiding safety and security issues is difficult.

Solid engineering practices involve deciding what to build, defining a set of requirements, building it, and then testing it. This development lifecycle process ensures that you’re solving for the correct problem and is centered around requirements management.

However, many organizations use Excel sheets or Word documents to house requirements. Initially, this approach might not seem problematic, but as products become more complex and requirements grow, the spreadsheet approach becomes unmanageable. Copying and pasting requirements across documents creates opportunities for errors, a lack of a single-source-of-truth and a lack of traceability introducing the risk of expensive product or software issues.

You can address this challenge by replacing legacy processes involving spreadsheets and other solutions with a more robust, automated tool specifically designed for requirements management. This change eliminates manual processes that open the door to errors, improves efficiency, and reduces the risk of missed requirements — resulting in potentially millions of dollars of savings.

RELATED: Why Choose Jama Connect® Over Microsoft Word and Excel Documents for Requirements Management

How Ford Selected a Single Requirements Tool for SDV Architecture

In 2022, Ford selected Jama Connect as a single requirements tool. The company started to deploy the tool focused on the development of a future software defined vehicle architecture.

Before Adopting Jama Connect

  • Engineers often lacked formal training in writing requirements.
  • Unconstrained natural language often contained large specifications (non-atomic).
  • Poor requirements were the standard, and engineers had no automatic ways to receive feedback.
  • Suppliers received thousands of requirement specifications in PDF, but some didn’t apply.
  • Signing-off on products was a manual process, with engineers often having to chase down test results.

After Adopting Jama Connect

  • Requirements engineering is a discipline with training easily available and just-in-time.
  • Engineers receive immediate and automatic feedback on requirements quality.
  • Product-line engineering automatically defines what is applicable to a variant of a product.
  • Dashboards show real-time and transparent progression of product sign-off.

Read the full Ford story HERE.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS WHITEPAPER IN ITS ENTIRETY:
Strategies for Mitigating Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Development Risks and Reducing Costly Recalls

Traceability in Systems Engineering: A Key to Successful Construction Projects

In the world of systems engineering, “traceability” is a concept that plays a crucial role in ensuring the success of complex projects. While it’s a term more commonly associated with fields like aerospace, defense, and software development, its principles are increasingly being applied to construction projects to improve outcomes, reduce risks, and ensure seamless project delivery.

What is Traceability in Systems Engineering?

Traceability in systems engineering refers to the ability to link each requirement to its source and track its fulfillment throughout the project lifecycle. This process involves creating a chain of evidence that shows how each requirement was derived, implemented, verified, and validated.

Simply put, traceability ensures that every requirement is accounted for from the moment it is conceived until the project is completed. It enables project managers, engineers, and stakeholders to understand the origins, rationale, and status of each requirement, ensuring that nothing is missed or overlooked.

RELATED: The Complete Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK)

How Does Traceability Work in Systems Engineering?

  • Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM): A core tool in traceability, the RTM maps each requirement to its corresponding design documents, test cases, and validation outcomes. This helps ensure that every requirement is directly linked to project deliverables.
  • Bi-directional Traceability: This involves tracking requirements both forward (from requirements to design, implementation, and testing) and backward (from deliverables back to the original requirements). This helps in managing changes, assessing the impact of modifications, and maintaining alignment between project objectives and outcomes.
  • Change Control and Impact Analysis: Traceability helps in managing changes to requirements by providing a clear understanding of how any change will affect the project. This is crucial for managing scope, cost, and schedule risks.

Applying Traceability to Construction Projects

While traceability is a fundamental practice in systems engineering, its application in the construction industry is becoming increasingly valuable. Here’s how traceability can be applied to make construction projects more successful:

  • Ensuring Complete and Clear Requirements: In construction, poorly defined or misunderstood requirements are a leading cause of project delays, cost overruns, and rework. By applying traceability practices, construction teams can ensure that all requirements are clearly defined, documented, and understood by all stakeholders from the outset. This reduces the risk of ambiguity and miscommunication, ensuring that every stakeholder is aligned with the project’s objectives.
  • Managing Complexity and Change: Modern construction projects are complex, involving multiple teams, disciplines, and stakeholders. Changes are inevitable, whether due to design modifications, client requests, or regulatory updates. Traceability allows construction teams to track every change back to its source, understand its impact on the project, and ensure that all affected requirements, designs, and plans are updated accordingly. This reduces the risk of errors, omissions, and costly rework.
  • Improving Compliance and Reducing Risks: Construction projects are subject to numerous regulations, standards, and codes. Traceability provides a structured way to ensure that all project requirements meet the necessary compliance standards. By maintaining an audit trail of all requirements and their fulfillment, construction teams can quickly demonstrate compliance, reducing the risk of regulatory penalties, legal disputes, and reputational damage.
  • Enhancing Communication and Collaboration: Traceability fosters better communication and collaboration among stakeholders by providing a single source of truth for all requirements. It ensures that everyone, from architects and engineers to contractors and clients, has access to the same information and understands how their work contributes to the overall project goals. This reduces misunderstandings, promotes accountability, and enhances teamwork.
  • Facilitating Project Delivery and Quality Assurance: Traceability helps ensure that the project is delivered on time and within budget by enabling construction teams to proactively manage risks, anticipate challenges, and respond to changes efficiently. By maintaining a clear line of sight from requirements to deliverables, teams can ensure that all project goals are met, and quality standards are achieved.

RELATED: AEC Best Practices Guide to Requirements Management

Why is Traceability Critical for Construction Project Success?

  • Reducing Rework and Cost Overruns: Traceability minimizes the risk of errors, omissions, and changes that lead to rework—a significant cause of cost overruns in construction. Industry studies estimate that rework can account for 5-15% of total project costs. By ensuring that every requirement is correctly implemented from the start, traceability helps reduce these costs and keeps the project on budget.
  • Improving Stakeholder Confidence: Traceability provides transparency and accountability, which is critical for building trust with stakeholders, including clients, regulators, and project teams. When everyone can see a clear, documented path from requirements to outcomes, confidence in the project’s success increases.
  • Ensuring Compliance and Avoiding Legal Issues: With construction projects facing stringent regulations and standards, traceability helps ensure that all requirements are met, reducing the risk of non-compliance penalties, delays, and legal issues. It provides an audit trail that can be used to demonstrate compliance to regulators, clients, and other stakeholders.
  • Supporting Continuous Improvement: Traceability provides valuable data and insights that can be used to improve future projects. By analyzing the traceability data, construction firms can identify patterns, lessons learned, and areas for improvement, leading to better project planning, execution, and outcomes in the future.

Conclusion

Traceability is not just a concept reserved for systems engineering; it is a powerful tool that can transform construction projects. By applying traceability practices, construction teams can reduce costs, manage complexity, ensure compliance, and build stakeholder confidence. As construction projects become more complex and multidisciplinary, traceability will increasingly become a key driver of success, helping teams deliver high-quality projects on time and within budget.

By adopting traceability, construction firms can not only improve their current projects but also build a foundation for continuous improvement, innovation, and sustained success in the industry.

Are you ready to make traceability a cornerstone of your construction project strategy?

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

In this image, we show a vehicle lit up by several digital points to portray automotive & semiconductor trends.

In the world of automotive and semiconductors, where the pace of technological innovation seems to accelerate daily, staying ahead of trends is critical. That’s why we sat down with Neil Stroud, Jama Software’s industry expert with decades of experience spanning major players like Intel, Arm, and Samsung. Neil has been at the forefront of the functional safety and semiconductor evolution, witnessing firsthand the challenges and transformative changes that shape these industries.

In this exclusive interview, Neil shares his unique perspective on the latest industry dynamics, the impact of global supply constraints, and how the automotive industry’s strategic relationships with semiconductor vendors are evolving. He also discusses Jama Software’s role in helping both sectors address increasingly complex requirements and integration challenges, driving efficiency and reducing risk across the supply chain. Join us in exploring how Jama Connect empowers companies to manage complexity, enhance traceability, and accelerate their time to market.

Driving Innovation: Quarterly Automotive & Semiconductor Trends with Neil Stroud

Kenzie Jonsson: Thanks for sitting down with me today, Neil! I’d love it if you could spend a little bit of time telling us about your background and career path.

Neil Stroud: Prior to joining Jama Software back in April of this year, I’d spent most of my career in the semiconductor industry, working for companies like Samsung, NEC, and PMC-Sierra. I also spent 12 years with Intel, and then moved into the IP space with Arm who are one of the key players in semiconductor IP. Directly before joining Jama Software, I spent time with CoreAVI, a niche software company in the safety-critical graphics space. Almost twenty years of my career has been spent in the functional safety domain. It wasn’t by design; it was more by accident. I didn’t set out to get into that domain at all. It all came about through my time at Intel where I was calling on a big industrial automation company and they asked me the question, “Hey, so when are you going to start supporting functional safety with Intel architecture?”

Of course, at that point, I didn’t know what it was, what it meant, what it was all about. One thing led to another, and I stumbled into the world of functional safety and was given a great opportunity at Intel to go… I was going to say, go and lead it, but it was more me volunteering and saying, I think we should be doing this. And Intel the senior leadership at Intel saying, “Oh, go on then, go do it.” That’s exactly what I did. So, it was quite nice because you’re acting as a startup within the safety of a big corporation like Intel. At that point you start to look at the fundamentals – what does safety look like? What do we need to do as a company? How do we sell it? How do we make money out of it? What are the technical issues? What problems are the industry facing? That kind of stuff. So, I pretty much became a GM of my own startup at that point, which was a great experience.

That was back in the day when complex semiconductor functional safety wasn’t really a thing. So, we were blazing the trail, not just for Intel but for the whole industry. So, little did I know back then where it would lead. It’s been so much fun. That’s also what took me to Arm – to drive the whole functional safety strategy across their ecosystem. So, all of that obviously led me into adjacent businesses especially automotive, as safety is of paramount importance where I worked with the big OEMs and throughout the supply chain. Now here I am at Jama Software bringing all of that experience of semiconductor, automotive, and software and apply that into the requirements management tools domain to drive our presence and growth in the automotive and semiconductor segments.

RELATED: Jama Connect for Automotive

Jonsson: What changes have you been part of at Jama Software recently to help us better meet the needs of our customers?

Stroud: It’s a really interesting time to join Jama Software. Obviously, we’ve been successful as a company over the preceding years. I’m amazed by the number of different market segments that are using Jama Connect. There are some obvious ones like automotive, semiconductor, medical, consumer electronics, and aerospace and defense. But there are some emerging segments as well, which is great to see, like insurance companies and state departments and beyond. Clearly, Jama Connect is a tool that transcends verticals. But of course, we need to be able to tweak and tailor that to accommodate the unique needs of each market segment. Functional safety and cybersecurity are great examples of these differences. That’s what’s exciting as part of the change with Francisco Partners acquiring us back in April for $1.2 billion. That to me is a leading indicator that they’re betting on us to continue growing and we are investing heavily to continue to delight our current customers and of course help new customers achieve new levels of innovation. Placing that bet is exciting for all of us at the company. As a result, one of the changes we made at that time was to really double down on the vertical focus. So, bringing in an organizational structure that allows us to do and in turn drive even more alignment with the needs of each market segment.

It’s good for us. But more importantly, it’s good for the customers because we can talk in their language, we can better understand their problems, and of course we can partner with them to solve their problems. And that in turn means tailoring our product to better suit their needs. So, it’s a win-win. It’s a confirmation of the importance of those verticals to Jama Software and sends a clear message to that we are listening and here to partner with them on their growth journey. So, it’s exciting for me and I see that excitement across the whole company.

Jonsson: Can you tell us what you’re seeing in the industry with the conversations that you’re having with our customers and prospects?

Stroud: Well, I cover both automotive and semiconductor industries. There’s obviously a lot of overlap between the two, and I think that’s an increasing trend we’ve seen over the last few years. The automotive guys have been building a lot more of a strategic relationship with the semiconductor vendors. Not least because when the supply constraints kicked in a couple of years ago, production lines were coming to a halt because they couldn’t get hold of the smallest, tiniest, cheapest components. And at that point, it is interesting how it created a real forcing function. The automotive segment said at that point, “Right, we aren’t going to get burnt again.”

So, they did one or two things. Some went out and tried to tie down the semiconductor vendors contractually to say, “Look, in the event that this happens again,..” and it will happen again because the semiconductor industry tends to work on about a seven-year cycle of oversupply versus constraint, “we want to guarantee our component supply.” The car OEMs and tier-one suppliers obviously didn’t want to get caught in that again. I don’t have visibility into how successful those discussions were, but I don’t think it will necessarily prevent a recurrence. The good news is that there is huge investment going into building new fabs that will provide significant capacity increases in the coming years.

The other interesting dynamic that happened was some of the auto guys said, “Well, screw that. We’re going to do our own silicon.” It sounds easy when you say it quickly, but there’s an awful lot to it when you commit to that solution. Questions like, “Okay, so how are you going to do that?”, “Are we going to go and engage with a design house or we’re going to hire a team of semiconductor design engineers,” “Which fab supplier will we use?” “Will they guarantee supply?”

It’s not a trivial undertaking and to make it work from an ROI perspective it’s probably a ten-year journey. And in the meantime, you’ve still got to work with what you’ve got. The other issue is once you get down that path, you are committed and it’s an expensive commitment to make. The downside is you don’t get the benefit of volume that the big guys like Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, or NVIDIA can offer you. They build millions and millions of chips and can amortize the cost across many customers and markets. If you’re building your own, you don’t get that advantage, but you mostly own your own destiny. So, pros and cons.

So that’s one dynamic. I think the other dynamic we’ve seen in automotive generally over the last five years is a repositioning of what’s important. If we go back, even just five years, we all thought we would be driving autonomous vehicles right now. There’d be mass deployment. You and I would both have one on the drive. Of course, that hasn’t happened because we all realized how difficult it is. I think we were in denial for a while, but that forced us to pivot to solving the software defined vehicle challenge. If we can get that taken care of, then that kind of leads us to the autonomous world anyway. And we can solve it in bite-sized chunks. So thankfully the automotive industry and the semiconductor industry, and probably lots of other industries now are focused on a software-defined vehicle as an intermediate step.

Solving this challenge doesn’t just apply to road vehicles. I think when you look at industrial automation, that’s the same. Do they want to get full autonomy? Of course they do. Is it a challenge? Yeah, it is. So, software-defined has a role to play there. Same in A&D, same in a lot of the other verticals. So, there are a lot of synergies between the verticals as well. That created, I think, clarity, but it also created a seismic shift for the car OEMs in that the OEMs themselves, and I’m talking more about the incumbent suppliers, the big guys like VW, Mercedes, Ford, GM and others. History shows they’re so used to being completely in charge of their own destiny – when you need something, you just put a team together and you go build it. Those days are gone. You look at complexity in a modern vehicle, whether it’s the hardware or the software, you just can’t do that these days. It’s not scalable.

So, you have to rely on the supply chain to drive the innovation and deliver those pieces, those elements, and then you as the OEM have to integrate them. But that’s not a world they’re used to. And it obviously introduces a whole world of complexity.

RELATED: Compliance Made Easy with Jama Connect for Automotive and Semiconductor Development

Stroud: That’s another area where using Jama Software really pays dividends to ensure the whole supply chain is seamlessly connected from a requirements perspective resulting in faster design and delivery across multiple vendors and a better-quality product overall. A modern vehicle can have upwards of 100 million lines of code going into a modern high-end vehicle and this is increasing exponentially. Those software elements are coming from a hundred different vendors. Some of those are safety-related, and some of those are security-related. All of a sudden as an OEM, I’m responsible for integrating all of that, checking it works together, checking it’s still safe, checking it’s still secure, and then rolling it out through the door for consumers to go and purchase a new vehicle.

At the same time, vehicle suppliers can use this new SDV approach to drive new business models that allow post-sales upgrades and updates. If a car doesn’t have a feature on the day of sale, in a year’s time the owner could say, “Hmm, it’d be nice to have that new feature.” You log into your account, put your credit card details in, and as if by magic, the new feature arrives over the air to your vehicle the next day. That’s a whole new world and we are only scratching the surface today.

So, I guess the punchline is from our perspective, and doing what we do, it’s all about efficient requirements management and traceability. This applies not just to the OEMs, but throughout the supply chain as well, to ensure the elements from those hundreds of different vendors all come together. Those requirements have got to be exquisitely accurate and all the independent interdependencies mapped out correctly to be sure that you’re not violating a safety goal or creating a bug in the system.

This way you get into traceability… How well is my project going? How healthy is it? How many of those requirements are covered right now and tested and using that capability to reduce the number of recalls, drive efficiency in the design team, reduce the risk, all those good things. Of course, this level of detail isn’t just important to the engineering teams. It can also be rolled out to senior management who are likely more interested in risk, cost, time-to-market and so on.

So, the market’s really coming to us. Jama Software is now the largest supplier of requirement management solutions overall, which we’re immensely proud of. But we have to learn from the market and our customers how Jama Connect changes grows and morphs as a solution to enable that ubiquitous risk reduction and efficiency improvement. So, there are some big factors at play.

So that’s automotive. The semiconductor segment is interesting as well. It’s a very different world, with different care abouts.

We’ve done very well in the semiconductor space overall, but it still frightens me to see how many spreadsheets are used to manage the business in the big semiconductor companies. And that’s speaking from experience because I lived in that world for a long time. There are way too many spreadsheets out there for doing requirements tracking. When you’re working that way, there’s no single source of truth and that will get you into trouble, guaranteed. It will cost you big with bugs in the silicon. So, it’s imperative to partner with the semiconductor industry and really drive change, accelerate innovation and solve tomorrow’s supply constraints. That’s on the chip design side, but also more recently, we’ve got the CHIPS Act, which is kick-starting a massive investment in the semiconductor industry to drive fab capacity to meet the huge growth in demand for chips.

So, we see the big players such as Intel, Samsung, and TSMC, all investing billions and billions of dollars to put fabs into place to meet this growth in demand and technology, which is exciting. The challenges are different to the auto market but guess what, these chip manufacturers need robust requirements management to run their business. And again, a lot of it’s been running on spreadsheets for a long time.

Now, we’re seeing, of course, headwinds in both industries. We still see that with EV vendors on the automotive side. We see even today challenges in the semiconductor industry with some consolidation of cost and trying to get costs under control. Jama Software has a critical role to play in that transformation. We can help drive efficiency and shorten cycles and time-to-revenue. All those things play into huge cost reductions for all. We are using our expertise in both product and deployment to educate and drive incremental success for our customers.

Kenzie Jonsson: Thank you for your time today, Neil! I really enjoyed this conversation, and I look forward to catching up with you next quarter!

This image portrays a webinar speaker who will lead the topic of Standardizing Requirements Management Across the Organization.

In this blog, we recap our webinar, “Standardizing Requirements Management Across the Organization” – Click HERE to watch it in its entirety.

Standardizing Requirements Management Across the Organization

Is your organization struggling with costly production failures?

A survey by Engineering.com revealed that a staggering 83% of companies faced production outcome failures — such as significant delays, cost overruns, product defects, compliance gaps, recalls, omitted requirements, and extensive rework — often stemming from inadequate requirements management.

In contrast, implementing standardized requirements management can lead to enhanced consistency, repeatability, predictability, and a distinct competitive advantage.

In this webinar, Matt Mickle – Director, Solutions & Consulting at Jama Software, explores the advantages of establishing, implementing, and enforcing requirements management standards within your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

  • The key benefits of standardizing requirements management across your organization
  • Common challenges encountered during the standardization process
  • How to leverage Jama Connect® to implement best practices and streamline your requirements management standards

BELOW IS AN ABBREVIATED SECTION OF THIS TRANSCRIPT

Matt Mickle: Hello and thank you all for joining today. Perhaps requirements management is a new task for you, or perhaps you have been doing it for many years. Hopefully, I can provide some value for any of those people listening regarding standardizing requirements management within their organization. Personally over the last 10 years working at Jama Software as a consultant and over hundreds of implementations that I’ve worked on with our customers on developing their process and modernizing their requirements elicitation, I have developed a strong bias towards the need for standardization is definitely a crucial area which if correctly developed within an organization, will actually improve the speed of product development rather than slowing it down.

So on the agenda today, we will talk about how standardizing requirements management processes can benefit your organization and also the challenges that organizations commonly face when developing a standardized process. Then we’ll dive into how Jama Connect can make the successful and sustainable implementation of standardized requirements management processes within your organization a reality. Before we get started, let’s make sure that we are aligned on what we mean when we say requirements management.

Requirements management, sometimes called requirements engineering or requirements definition is the process of documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing, and agreeing on requirements, and then of course controlling change in communication to relevant stakeholders. It is a continuous process throughout product development and the process that companies use to take their raw ideas and turn them into detailed requirements. The pillars of requirements management include requirement definition, requirement verification and validation, and requirements change management. The most fundamental aspect of any requirements management activity is the need for communicating effectively.

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

Mickle: While requirements are originally elicited within the first step of the product development lifecycle, it is important that we keep in mind that they are part of a bigger picture and that ownership of that bigger picture may vary. For example, the governance of requirements management processes may fall under your organization’s project or portfolio management office and can be controlled centrally or sometimes companies may choose to control that in a project-specific way. Just as there are multiple approaches to the ownership of requirements processes, there is no one-size-fits-all requirements management standard framework, and there are many standards that are proven to work. Examples include those defined in the system engineering body of knowledge or the business analyst body of knowledge or others listed here. I’d like to point out a great quote from Aristotle. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

I think this really represents the value for considering and taking in from multiple approaches within your organizations in order to drive for successful adaptation of standards. So now that we have level set on our definition of requirements management and have established that ownership and approach can vary from company to company and even from project to project, let’s move on to our main topic. Standardizing requirements management across the organization, a concept that can be entirely agnostic and universally beneficial no matter your product development structure or methodology.

Now there is no argument that requirements management has increased in prominence in the recent years and regardless of industry, it is largely no longer considered a nice to have for development, but rather an absolute necessity. Yet for most implementation details often remain ambiguous and therefore difficult to apply. We can be entirely committed to getting the requirements right with a little consensus on what getting the requirements right actually means. It can be hard to escape the manifestations of the Mobius strip and requirements management such as the statement requirements management is planned in the requirements management plan. This is where standardization arrives to save the day.

The standard becomes our requirements management plan versus being a separate effort for each product or project that detracts from effort that could be focused instead on development. There is a massive evidence demonstrating the benefits of defining, deploying, and enforcing requirements management standards for your organization. Those benefits include providing a framework for efficiency, predictability, repeatability, and a benchmark for improvement, better traceability, mitigation of risk, easier training and onboarding, and the elimination of unnecessary rework. Additionally, standardization allows organizations to leverage a diverse array of resources while maintaining consistent results, and it also provides transparency both in process and in work performed.

Just as the concept of reusing our requirements and leveraging the work that is done already, which is highly appealing, standardization of requirements management processes could be viewed as reusing our processes for managing requirements for repeatability of success. A strong case for standardization is illustrated in the quote, “Quality is free but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it.” What you put in is what you get out. Valuable products are a result of high-quality inputs as well as high-quality processes. Even perfect requirements can’t withstand the damaging effects of a poor process. The pressure to reduce development time is only ever-increasing and standardization liberates development teams from worrying about the mechanics of development process and allows them to instead give their full focus to solution development.

Consider the quote from Lee Iacocca, the former CEO of Chrysler. “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” Now imagine a new tech company that is developing a revolutionary product, but everyone is trusted with their own process. This causes teams to work in silos. They develop strong processes but with little alignment. Eventually, their misinterpretation with one another can lead to bugs or the wrong things being developed, causing delays and extensive meetings to try and realign. What they can do is define a standard process for communicating and aligning on the requirements. And with a communication plan and regular alignment meetings, this will them to coordinate more effectively and have the same vision about what they’re building.

Earlier I stated that the most fundamental aspect of requirements management is the need to communicate effectively. If establishing requirements management standards seems like a heavy-handed approach, then just try polling a cross-section of your development team to define the difference between validation and verification, and maybe you’ll reconsider. It is critical that the foundations of your requirements management process are uniformly understood and applied across your organization in order to ensure quality with your final product. Now you might be wondering if the case for standardization is so strong, then why isn’t everyone doing it? This is a fair question and the rationale is likely due to previous challenges they have faced or perceived challenges. So let’s take a few minutes to explore what challenges teams may face in their efforts for standardization.

RELATED: Jama Connect Advisor™ Datasheet

Mickle: One common challenge is that we need to correct the misconception that standardization stifles creativity and response time. Standardization of requirements management is about removing the things that get in the way of your work rather than adding more work to your work. Other common misconceptions that face a standardization effort are that it’s too time-consuming or it’s too costly to implement or that it will disrupt development and progress. Given the overwhelming statistical correlation between poor requirements and project failure, it’s pretty hard to bear these arguments too much weight. The basic thought is that if you can make time to fix your problems, then you can definitely make time to plan so that those problems don’t occur.

Okay, so now we have discussed some of the benefits and the perceived challenges to a standardization of a requirements management approach. Let’s take a minute to reconsider how to move forward. The first step is the definition of a process framework. That process framework may include policies and standards, processes, procedures, training and tools, and please note that there’s a surprising amount of debate over the definitions for the hierarchy between the terms listed on this slide.

My intent is to illustrate the importance of establishing the framework not to prescribe the individual elements or their order. Over the past several years, Jama Software has developed comprehensive solution offerings in many industries. Those include a process, framework, definition, or the different verticals. We are constantly working on improving those frameworks as the industry changes, as new standards and maturity models are introduced, and as we learn from our customers and industry experts that we work very closely with.

Here is an example just to give you an idea of what a concept of a process framework would look like. Basically taking the foundations and breaking them into standards or policies and then into processes and supporting procedures. Here are some additional supporting elements that are extremely critical and must be taken into consideration. People, put the necessary resources in place to properly apply requirements management and recognize and develop the skills needed for the functions needed. Processes, it’s important to standardize and formalize processes at the project and product levels in order to ensure good requirements management practices are consistently applied.

WATCH THIS WEBINAR IN ITS ENTIRETY:
Standardizing Requirements Management Across the Organization

Requirements Advisor

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Jama Connect Advisor™

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 Jama Connect’s powerful features… in under five minutes.

In this Features in Five video, Katie Huckett, Senior Product Manager at Jama Software, will introduce viewers to Jama Connect Advisor™, Jama Connect’s natural language processing (NLP) tool, designed to improve requirement quality.

In this video, learn how Jama Connect Advisor enhances your product management by:

    • Reducing authoring errors
    • Increasing clarity
    • Optimizing foundational product needs and requirements managed in Jama Connect Cloud

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Katie Huckett: Hi. I’m Katie Huckett, Senior Product Manager at Jama Software. In this video, I’ll introduce you to Jama Connect Advisor, an add-on to Jama Connect Cloud that uses engineering-based natural language processing to optimize requirements authoring. It helps you write effective, well-organized requirements with speed and accuracy.

We’ll explore how Jama Connect Advisor can enhance your product development by reducing errors, increasing clarity, and optimizing the foundational requirements managed within Jama Connect Cloud. Jama Connect Advisor is designed to help teams author complex requirements quickly and accurately using AI and engineering-focused natural language processing. It minimizes disruption to engineering workflows while improving quality. How does it work?

Jama Connect Advisor applies the globally recognized INCOSE requirements rules and EARS syntax patterns. Even experienced engineers find it challenging to follow all forty INCOSE rules and six EARS patterns while writing even a single requirement.

That’s where Jama Connect Advisor steps in to streamline the process and enhance productivity. Now I’d like to show you a demonstration of how Jama Connect Advisor enables teams to intelligently improve requirements quality and usability, minimize requirement ambiguity and contradictions, which are the source of seventy to eighty-five percent of rework, and save time authoring, reviewing, analyzing, and updating requirement statements.

RELATED: Jama Connect Advisor™ Datasheet

Huckett: There are a few different ways that you can use Jama Connect Advisor within the Jama Connect Cloud application.

Let’s start by adding a new requirement. Once you’ve added your requirement into the description field, you’ll notice the highlighted text to analyze the prompt underneath the description field. Once you’re ready, go ahead and select the text that you’d like to analyze and select analyze selection.

Underneath the description field, you’ll see a quick summary of your INCOSE score as well as any errors found, if any. You can move on at this point and save your item, or you can go ahead and view the details if you’d like to make changes at this point. So I can see on the slide over panel, the text that’s been analyzed, what my INCOSE score is, eighty-seven percent, and then the different identifiers that I’ve flagged it for the INCOSE rules. Underneath, you’ll see the EARS errors, if any were found. You’ll also see some information about the EARS notation pattern that your requirement might align with. I’m gonna go ahead and save this item, and I’ll wait to make my changes in a moment.

Now that I’ve saved that, let’s say I want to analyze a whole group of existing requirements. I’m going to go ahead and analyze all items within my set on the side here. So I’ll select all items and you’ll notice the batch analyze button, appears in the top right-hand corner. Once you select that, you’ll be given a summary view of what will be analyzed. So you can see I’ve got seventeen items selected here. All seventeen of those items happen to have a Jama Connect Advisor-enabled field on it, and then we have thirty-four fields per, these items. So it appears we have two Jama Connect Advisor enabled fields, per each item within this group.

Once you select analyze, the slide of our panel will pop up on the right-hand side. You’ll notice your group of requirements. Each item is listed at the top within this drop-down. You can navigate with the drop-down or the directional arrows. And then underneath, we also have a field drop-down. So as I mentioned, we have two fields per item type on this particular example. So I can swap between those as well either using the drop down or the directional arrows to move through.

So now that I’ve come in here and I see the, recommendations, I’d like to go in and edit my item to make some changes. So here, I want to remove some of the items that were flagged. I’m gonna remove this and just update this to say, you know, users can create a login using we don’t wanna use pronouns, per that flag. So I’m gonna change this to using an Apple ID, email.

RELATED: The Essential Guide to Requirements Management and Traceability

Huckett: I’m gonna update this to be an actual logical condition with or social media. And then I’m gonna remove the example of LinkedIn because I don’t necessarily need that, and I’ll just update that to end the sentence there. Once I’ve made my changes, I can select the text again in the edit quick edit mode, analyze the selection, and I can see here my INCOSE rule score is now a hundred percent. I still have to deal with my ears errors, but so far so good on INCOSE.

I can view my details again in the slide-over panel and update here. I can also close that back out, and I can return to my batch analysis results by selecting the latest analysis link at the top, and that will take me right back in where I was before I made those changes. Now I can go ahead and save my item and complete those changes going forward. If I want to work through these requirements across multiple sessions or maybe I just wanna have a benchmark of what my score was before I started making my edits, you can then generate a report within the slide-over panel.

That will open up in your reports history page where you can download the report into Excel.

Once you open the report that was generated, we have a few different tabs you can work through in the worksheet. The first one just gives you some general information. What’s the average score of your requirements, the minimum, and maximum score, your total number of valid requirements, and then if you did have any invalid requirements as well. The file analysis reports, tab will give you a complete breakdown of all the requirements that were analyzed, their score, and then any corresponding INCOSE flags that may have popped up within the analysis.

We also have an explanation of each INCOSE flag as long as with their associated description. And then if your, report did happen to include any invalid requirements for any reason, those will be included in their separate sheet as well. Thank you for watching this demonstration of Jama Connect Advisor. If you would like to learn more about how Jamala Connect can optimize your product development process, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com

If you are already a Jama Connect customer and would like more information about Jama Connect Advisor, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Jama Software Consultant.

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

This image portrays the TrustRadius announcement of Jama Connect being awarded Buyer's Choice 2025.

Jama Connect Receives Buyer’s Choice for 2025 on TrustRadius!

We’re proud to announce that Jama Connect has earned the Buyer’s Choice distinction from TrustRadius for 2025, recognizing it as a top platform for requirements, risk, and test management. This award reflects excellence in key areas: best capabilities, value for price, and customer relationships, based on verified user feedback.

“Requirements management is being revolutionized by Jama Connect to enable seamless collaboration and traceability” – Verified User – Project Manager in Information Technology, Medical Device Company – TrustRadius Review

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

Visit the full report to see why customers love using Jama Connect. This award reflects Jama Software’s commitment to driving innovation and delivering reliable solutions that help teams achieve exceptional results.

“Jama Connect has been invaluable to our organization as a common place to host our product’s specifications (user needs, system and module requirements, system interface), testing (test cases and traceability), as well as risk management documentation. All of our recent projects make use of Jama Connect and is used by the majority of our engineers.” – Verified User, Manager in Engineering, Medical Device Company – TrustRadius Review

We sincerely thank our customers for their feedback and ongoing support. Jama Software remains dedicated to providing the best resources and expertise to help you succeed!

“Jama Connect – Excellent Tool for Regulated Products!! We use Jama Connect to manage our IEC 61508 functional safety requirements that are used to certify our products. Jama Connect had an out of the box solution which allowed us to have tools to support all our artifacts and were able to further exploit its customization to support our companies unique processes. All safety and non-safety requirements across every engineering function uses the tool in this use case.” – Eric Zaremski, Lead Program Manager, FORT Robotics – TrustRadius Review

Intelligently improve your development process with Jama Connect:
Start your free 30-day trial!

From all of us at Jama Software, thank you!

This image portrays an energy industry worker and implies that the blog is a buyer guide for the industry.

In this blog, we’ll recap a section of our eBook, “Energy Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution for Energy” – Click HERE to download it in its entirety.

Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Product Requirements Management and Traceability Solution for Energy

Use a Single Platform to Streamline Complex Energy Product Requirements Management and Traceability

Energy companies face numerous challenges in managing product requirements and traceability due to growing complexity and enhanced regulatory scrutiny to ensure quality, safety, and security. Delivering products or systems on time, reducing rework and recalls, and speeding up reviews and approvals, are critical in the intensely competitive environment.

Energy companies often attempt to manage critical processes using Word, Excel, or PDF document-based technology. While this manual approach may be adequate for small, simple projects, it fails as complexity and scale increase. Reliance on legacy document management software such as Confluence or SharePoint for tracing, storing, sharing, and retrieving requirements and traceability documents means dealing with data siloes, lack of interoperability, constant changes, security threats, and limited collaboration and analysis.

As a result, companies have difficulty:

  • Tracking the decomposition and implementation of their requirements
  • Managing the traceability between requirements, tests, designs and software
  • Generating documents to demonstrate adherence to standards for auditors
  • Managing updates and changes across concurrent or similar product development
  • Identifying product defects early in development
  • Delivering high quality products on time and budget
  • Collaborating effectively with all stakeholders around product requirements and standards
  • Creating an audit trail around sign-off and implementation of requirements

BOTTOM LINE

The increasing complexity of the energy industry and continued reliance on Word, Excel or outdated tools that lead to rework, delays, inefficient work processes, and late discovery of defects make it difficult for energy companies to efficiently manage product requirements to meet both internal and customer needs.

RELATED: Power Efficiency and Innovation Across Your Development Process with Jama Connect® for Energy Storage Systems

What if you didn’t have to compromise?

This Buyer’s Guide incorporates insights from Jama Software’s more than 15 years of experience partnering with forward-thinking product development teams and industry experts. We’ve designed a modern, digital platform that helps energy companies efficiently manage and deliver complex products by providing a centralized repository for all requirements, tests, and reports that are accessible by all stakeholders.

This allows energy companies to:

  • Reduce rework and product recalls significantly
  • Deliver products on time
  • Find defects faster and earlier
  • Reduce manual work associated with managing data in documents involving searching, duplicating, and formatting data, and tracking communications around requirements and reporting
  • Speed up review and approval cycles for requirements, feasibility, and certification documents
  • Increase product and data quality to ensure full test coverage, track end-to-end decomposition of products, and enable a unified data model for reporting and data extraction
  • Understand the source and impact of changes better and remove scope creep
  • Assign clear ownership over product definition

Use these insights to better understand the challenges you’re up against and thoughtfully consider potential solutions. Plus, learn how to get the buy-in you need to undertake the kind of transformation necessary to succeed with complex products.

Making the Case for Change

Jama Connect® helps energy organizations transition their product development from a document-based way of working to a powerful —but easy-to-use—digital platform that provides a single source of truth which is easily
accessible by all stakeholders at any time. When product requirements and traceability are managed in a centralized platform, users benefit from a straightforward process and the business impact and value of the platform becomes clear across the organization—making management buy-in easier.

If your company is not considering the importance of transitioning to a more modern, digital, streamlined process, time is not on your side. Failing to act quickly can leave your organization even further behind.

But to see the value of a positive impact a system can have, stakeholders in an organization must appreciate the challenges first.

This is where you come in. You can help quantify the problem within your organization and provide data to help make the case for change.

Go through the exercises in the next section using data from your organization to identify your current situation and the size of the potential opportunity.

Tools to Assess the Situation in Your Organization

Throughout the past decade of working with energy (among other industries managing complex products or systems), four common pain points continuously arise for those who have yet to transform their process.

We’ll provide context around the problems and share equations with examples to help you uncover the savings from a modern product requirements management and traceability solution. Remember to adjust the variables according to your company’s metrics to get a more precise estimate, and rethink how your team functions.

Improving any one of these four aspects of your process produces real savings. While the calculations on the following pages aren’t cumulative, they impact one another and can add up to significant value for your organization.

This is the potential of using a modern digital platform. If realized, it can radically change your business and be the competitive edge you need in today’s market.

THE FOUR COMMON PAIN POINTS

  1. Rework
  2. Delays in Product Delivery
  3. Inefficient Process for Working with Internal and External Stakeholders
  4. Failure to Find and Fix Defects Early

Rework

In our experience, approximately 30-50% of a given product development process is rework. Rework is any time spent on extra work — including mid-product development changes, incorrect testing, or fixing problems — and it costs your company big time. Requirements errors cause the majority of rework. Improving the ability to track requirements from definition through testing to catch changes and adjust scope can ensure you’re doing or building the right thing and massively reducing overall lifecycle costs. Complete the equation below to get an understanding of the number of hours your team spends in rework and the value of that in working hours alone.

RELATED: Reduce Rework – ROI Calculator

PRO TIP

If your organization is working on more than one product at a time, repeat this calculation for each and add up the savings for a holistic view.

Delays in Product Delivery

Delivering products quickly and maintaining high quality are usually seen as compounding challenges. Conventional wisdom says the quicker you complete a product, the more likely it is to have issues, and vice versa. Understanding the impact of change, capturing decisions, communicating feedback, and reusing existing intellectual property — all aspects that can help speed time-to-market — can be improved with a modern requirements management and traceability solution.

RELATED: Reclaiming Productive Work Time – ROI Calculator

PRO TIP

Cost savings can certainly be great and have an impact on your bottom line, but don’t forget the qualitative implications. Consider what it would mean for your company’s reputation to complete high quality, product development faster.

Inefficient Process for Working with Internal and External Stakeholders

Are your days spent in inefficient meetings with internal stakeholders, customers, and subcontractors, sifting through emails and document versions for historical information, waiting for reviews and approvals, or creating documents for auditors? You’re not alone. Many teams suffer the repercussions of archaic, siloed product development work. A modern process maximizes efficiency by tackling the root causes of momentum-killing delays and holdups. Calculate how much unproductive work time is costing your business and imagine the possibilities of getting that time back. What could you do with one extra hour each day?

RELATED: Improving The Review Process – ROI Calculator

PRO TIP

We’ve seen long status meetings shrink or vanish when teams have the right solutions in place. Think about your team’s schedule and adjust the average time saved per person based on the time spent in meetings each week.

Failure to Find and Fix Defects Early

It’s common for product development to reveal defects at some point between launch and delivery. The important thing is to have a system in place that can quickly and accurately identify defects and track their impact up and downstream. This provides visibility into the problem as early as possible when it’s less detrimental to fix.

RELATED: Identify Defects Early – ROI Calculator

PRO TIP

This calculation factors in personnel hours, but you should also think about the cost of delays and missed opportunities. Plus, should defects go undetected due to sub-par product requirements or testing or delivering lower-quality products could have devastating consequences.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS EBOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY:
Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Product Requirements Management and Traceability Solution for Energy

This image portrays an announcement that Jama Connect has once again been named the overall requirements management software leader by G2

Jama Connect is Once Again Named by G2 as the Overall Leader for Requirements Management Software

We’re excited to announce that Jama Connect has once again been recognized as the overall leader in the G2 Grid Report for Requirements Management Software for Fall 2024! G2’s rankings are based on verified user reviews and data gathered from across the web, analyzed through their proprietary v3.0 algorithm. The Fall 2024 G2 Grid Report reflects results calculated through August 27, 2024, showcasing the best in the field.

In addition to being named the top choice for requirements management, Jama Connect earned several prestigious accolades spanning all business size and multiple geographies for Fall 2024, including:

  • Overall Leader
  • Momentum Leader
  • Small-Business Leader
  • Mid-Market Leader
  • Enterprise Leader
  • EMEA Leader
  • Europe Leader

Learn more about the Fall 2024 G2 Grid for top Requirements Management Software products:
DOWNLOAD IT HERE

This recognition highlights the exceptional value we bring to customers transitioning from document-based approaches for managing complex product, systems, and software development. We are deeply grateful to our users for their trust and for sharing their open and honest feedback on our product, services, and support.

Customer Feedback Highlights

“Product Design teams need a requirements management tool like Jama [Connect]. Using Jama Connect allows our software development team to have a well-organized and well-written set of requirements. It allows us to more easily maintain a baseline of features in our continuously evolving software.” — Mark M., Mid-Market – G2.com

“Jama [Connect] is not only a ‘document oriented’ ALM tool, it gives the organization the ability to map the project structure the product structure making it an easy entry point for R&D folks. Configured properly, it is a real technical and regulatory ‘single source of truth.” — Frederic Fiquet, Director, Systems Engineering – G2.com

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

We are committed to providing the best possible experience for our users, and being named the overall leader by G2 is a testament to the success and satisfaction our customers have found with Jama Connect.

From all of us at Jama Software, thank you!

Where to Find Jama Software This Fall: Our 2024 Event Schedule

Join the Jama Software team in person this fall at some of the industry’s most exciting events. Whether you’re attending to learn about the latest trends in systems engineering, requirements management, or Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), our team of subject matter experts will be on hand to meet, discuss, and demonstrate how Jama Connect® can help you tackle complex development challenges.

Below is our lineup of events for October and November — let’s connect!

TSIA World Envision – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA – October 21-23, 2024

  • Industry: Softech
  • Jama Software Representatives: Brian Morrisroe, Sales Lead and Steven Meadows, Principal Solutions Lead
  • Booth Number: 226
  • About this Event: We’re sponsoring the TSIA World Envision Expo in Las Vegas, where tech executives and professionals gather to network, connect, and explore solutions. Visit us at Booth #226 and join our Expo Theatre Session on Wednesday, October 23, at 12:15 PM to discover the power of Jama Connect.
  • Learn More: https://www.tsia.com/conference

Reuters Automotive USA 2024 – Detroit, Michigan, USA – October 21-23, 2024

  • Industry: Automotive / Semiconductor
  • Jama Software Representatives: Neil Stroud, General Manager – Auto & Semi and Steve Rush, Principal Solutions Consultant
  • Booth Number: 18
  • About this Event: Reuters’ Automotive USA is the automotive industry gathers to hear from trailblazing OEMs, innovative solution providers, and government agencies tackling today’s biggest challenges. Be sure to stop by the Jama Software booth #18 and say hi!
  • Learn More: https://events.reutersevents.com/automotive/automotive-usa

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

NDIA 27th Annual System and Mission Engineering Conference – Norfolk, Virginia, USA – October 27-31, 2024

  • Industry: Aerospace & Defense,
  • Jama Software Representatives: Cary Bryczek, Director – Solutions & Consulting and Rob Wilmot, Senior Account Executive
  • Booth Number: 4
  • About this Event: The Annual Systems & Mission Engineering Conference gathers defense professionals from industry, government, and academia to discuss improving defense acquisition and system performance. Jama Software is hosting a workshop on Monday, October 28 at 5:00pm in the Imagination Meeting Room. No prior experience with MBSE or Jama Connect is required. Space is limited. Contact us to learn more!
  • Learn More: https://www.ndia.org/events/2024/10/28/systems-mission-engineering-2024

MBSE Tutorial Session – Norfolk, Virginia, USA – Monday, October 28 | 5:00 – 7:00 PM ET

  • Event Theme: MBSE
  • Jama Software Representative: Cary Bryczek, Director of Aerospace & Defense Solutions
  • Location: Hilton Norfolk – The Main, Imagination Meeting Room, 3rd floor (in-person only)
  • About this Event: Attending the NDIA Systems and Mission Engineering Conference? Don’t miss our complimentary MBSE Tutorial Session the day before the event! Connect MBSE to mission-critical systems with insights aligned to DoD’s 2018 Digital Engineering Strategy & INCOSE SE Vision 2035. Build a complete model that includes mission needs, requirements, architecture, tests, risks, and software stories. Gain expertise in authoring, traceability, collaboration features, and measuring system development progress in real-time using Jama Connect.
  • Food & Drinks: Enjoy a buffet dinner with beer, wine, and cocktails while networking with peers
  • Seats are limited! Secure your spot now – https://lnkd.in/gEjJe5k4

RELATED: The Benefits of Jama Connect: Supercharge Your Systems Development and Engineering Process

ASEC INCOSE UK 2024 – Edinburgh, Scotland – November 5 – 6, 2024

  • Industry: Aerospace & Defense
  • Jama Software Representatives: Karl Mulcahy, Global Sales Manager, A&D and Colin White, Principal Solutions Consultant
  • Booth Number: TBA
  • About this Event: ASEC 2024 is The UK’s premier System Engineering event, attracting a wide range of industry, academic, and government professionals.
  • Learn More: https://www.asec2024.org.uk

Software-Defined Vehicles Europe 2024 – Frankfurt, Germany – November 11 – 14, 2024

  • Industry: Automotive / Semiconductor
  • Jama Software Representatives: Matt Mickle, Director – Solutions & Consulting and Stefan Stange, Managing Director – Sales
  • Booth Number: TBA
  • About this Event: The Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV) event is co-located with Cyber Security Europe and Connected Vehicles Europe, bringing together decision-makers from leading OEMs and Tier 1s in the Cybersecurity, Connectivity, and Software-Defined Vehicle sectors.
    Don’t Miss: Matt Mickle and Florian Rohde, Managing Partner, iProcess LLC – on November 12, from 11:00 a.m. – 11:40 a.m. CET as they present their session “Supporting SDV Development Through Traceabile Agile” on the Main Stage.
  • Learn More: https://www.automotive-iq.com/events-sdv-software-defined-vehicles-europe

SpaceTech Expo 2024 – Bremen, Germany – November 19 – 21, 2024

  • Industry: Aerospace & Defense
  • Jama Software Representatives: Karl Mulcahy,Global Sales Manager, A&D, Martijn Janssen, Senior Solutions Consultant, and Dora Gerő, Senior Inbound Marketing Representative
  • Booth Number: R46
  • About this Event: Join us at Space Tech Expo! Europe’s largest exhibition and conference for the space industry. Stop by the Jama Software booth R46!
  • Learn More: https://epc.space/event/spacetech-2024/

We’re excited to meet with you and explore how Jama Connect can optimize your complex projects. Don’t miss this chance to connect with our experts, dive into the latest innovations, and gain insights tailored to your specific needs. Be sure to mark your calendar and reach out to schedule a one-on-one conversation at any of these events!

This image shows a car detecting other vehicles, depicting the technology available for lane keeping systems, which ALKS 157 helps keep safe.

Understanding ALKS 157: Ensuring Safety and Compliance with Automatic Lane-Keeping Systems

As the automotive industry shifts toward increased automation, technologies like Automatic Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS) are playing a crucial role in improving both safety and convenience. ALKS, regulated by the ALKS 157 standard, is a key technology driving the advancement of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles.

In this blog, we’ll explore what ALKS 157 is and how automakers can ensure they meet the rigorous standards set by this regulation.

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

What is ALKS 157?

ALKS 157 refers to United Nations Regulation No. 157, which establishes the framework for Automatic Lane Keeping Systems. These systems allow vehicles to maintain a steady course within a lane under certain conditions, without the need for constant driver intervention. The goal is to enhance safety, reduce driver fatigue, and provide a foundation for more advanced autonomous driving capabilities.

Specifically, ALKS 157 applies to vehicles traveling at speeds of up to 60 km/h, often in urban environments or during congested traffic conditions. It defines how the system should function, including its ability to manage both lateral and longitudinal movements within the lane, monitor the driver’s readiness to resume control, and safely perform emergency maneuvers.

To comply with ALKS 157, automakers must ensure their systems can:

  • Maintain lane discipline: Vehicles must stay centered within their lanes, automatically adjusting steering to prevent departure.
  • Handle unexpected events: Systems must detect and respond to sudden obstacles, such as braking vehicles or pedestrians entering the roadway.
  • Ensure driver engagement and handover: Drivers should be able to seamlessly take control when necessary. Systems must issue clear alerts and provide enough time for the driver to intervene.
  • Record and log data: ALKS-equipped vehicles must log specific operational data to help authorities assess compliance and performance, especially following incidents.

RELATED: Jama Connect for Automotive

The Importance of Compliance and How Jama Connect® Can Help

Automakers are under increasing pressure to ensure that their vehicles not only feature cutting-edge technology but also adhere to strict safety regulations. ALKS 157 is particularly stringent because it addresses both the technical capabilities of lane-keeping systems and the ethical considerations surrounding the move toward autonomous driving.

Non-compliance with ALKS 157 can lead to regulatory penalties, market delays, and—most importantly—safety risks. For this reason, manufacturers need robust processes in place to manage these complex requirements throughout the vehicle development lifecycle.

Jama Connect provides powerful tools for managing requirements, ensuring traceability, and verifying that every part of a system meets the necessary standards, helping automakers stay compliant with regulations like ALKS 157.

Here’s how Jama Connect can support compliance efforts:

  • Define and manage requirements: Jama Connect allows automakers to clearly define ALKS 157 requirements, break them down into manageable tasks, and track them across teams to ensure all aspects of compliance are addressed.
  • Maintain traceability: The platform ensures that every requirement is traceable throughout development, from initial design to testing and validation. This traceability is essential for proving compliance during audits or regulatory reviews.
  • Facilitate collaboration: Complex systems like ALKS require cross-functional collaboration between engineering teams, safety experts, and regulators. Jama Connect’s collaborative tools make it easier for teams to stay aligned and address compliance challenges early in the process.
  • Streamline reviews and approvals: With Jama Connect, automakers can manage the review and approval process for ALKS 157 requirements more efficiently, reducing delays and ensuring the final product meets regulatory standards.

In today’s automotive landscape, where rapid technological advancements and stringent regulatory demands intersect, Jama Connect provides the tools necessary to ensure compliance without stifling innovation. By leveraging Jama Connect, automakers can stay ahead of evolving standards like ALKS 157 and continue to deliver safe, reliable, and compliant vehicles.

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