Tag Archive for: Product Development & Management

The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect® Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability

In this blog, we recap a section of our eBook, “The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability” – Click HERE to read it in its entirety.

The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect® Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability

To adapt to increasing industry challenges and complexities, innovative organizations are now requiring best-in-class software to scale development, reduce risk, save time, and ensure compliance to quality, safety, and security regulations.

As organizations strive to deliver innovative products while navigating regulatory requirements, the tools they use for requirements management and traceability can make or break their success. This eBook is designed to help you understand the critical differences between Jama Connect® and Codebeamer, two leading requirements management solutions, so you can make an informed decision.

The Requirements Sector

The landscape of requirements management has undergone significant transformation. Traditional tools (like IBM® DOORS®) which once dominated the market, are now considered outdated. These legacy systems often lack the flexibility, ease of use, and integration capabilities required by modern teams. As a result, organizations are turning to modern solutions like Jama Connect that are built to meet the needs of today’s dynamic development environments.

Why Jama Connect?

Jama Connect stands out as a leading requirements management solution because it is designed with the user in mind. Its modern, user-friendly interface, combined with powerful features like comprehensive traceability and real-time collaboration, ensures that teams can manage requirements and risks effectively throughout the product, systems, and software lifecycle. Jama Connect also emphasizes customer success, offering expert support and training to help teams maximize their investment. Ease of use, rapid deployment, pre-configured well-documented industry frameworks, and in-house subject matter experts provide the fastest time-to-value/ROI without sacrificing quality or safety.

RELATED: See why users rank Jama Connect as the #1 requirements management tool on the market in the most recent G2 Report

The Clear Advantages of Jama Connect Over Codebeamer

If you’re comparing Jama Connect to Codebeamer, one thing is clear — Jama Connect is the only purpose-built requirements management platform that delivers Live TraceabilityTM which allows engineering and other teams to
quickly and easily access the latest and most complete information for any requirement, no matter the stage of development or tools used. This real-time capability boosts productivity by ensuring teams work with the latest data and reduces risks like delays and defects by finding issues early. In addition, Jama Connect accelerates your product, systems, and software development by managing user needs and product information across the end-to-end development lifecycle.

Only Jama Connect Delivers Live Traceability™ Across Best-of-Breed Tools

Other vendors lock you into inferior platforms. Only Jama Connect seamlessly integrates with your tools of choice across engineering teams.  Only Jama Connect can manage the state of development across all integrated teams and tools. Jama Connect’s unique and industry-specific Traceability Information Models define the relationships and expected behavior across teams and tools.

LEARN MORE

Our customers consistently tell us that they chose Jama Connect over Codebeamer for the following reasons:

1. Ease of Use and High Adoptability

Jama Connect’s intuitive design and user-friendly interface make it easy for teams to adopt and use. Unlike Codebeamer, which can be complex and challenging for new users, Jama Connect ensures that teams can start managing requirements effectively with minimal training. Users insist on a requirements management and traceability solution that is easy to use so that both internal and external stakeholders can efficiently access, share, and review information in a single source of truth, increasing and speeding up the adoption across teams for a better ROI.

The ease-of-use is not only imperative for users but also for administrators. Jama Connect offers an intuitive and user-friendly administration interface that enables admins to adapt the tool to their organization’s needs without having to learn overcomplicated configuration settings and concepts.

2. Modern Integration and Collaboration Capabilities

Jama Connect provides comprehensive traceability and impact analysis, enabling teams to manage change effectively and reduce the risk of errors. The platform seamlessly integrates with other best-of-breed tools (including Jira and Azure DevOps) in the development ecosystem, ensuring that teams can work efficiently without having to change their other development tools. In contrast, Codebeamer focuses on working solely with other PTC tools and its own limited application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities.

Modern product and software development requires optimal real-time collaboration between stakeholders. Jama Connect provides an enhanced collaboration experience with its communication streams and advanced Review Center, enabling both internal and external stakeholders with the capabilities to perform formal and iterative reviews.

3. Intelligent Engineering Management

Jama Connect empowers Intelligent Engineering Management by addressing a critical challenge faced by engineering and product development organizations: the lack of real-time KPIs and metrics during development. This gap often leads to delays, budget overruns, and product defects or recalls. Jama Connect uniquely transforms traceability into a measurable instrument, enabling teams to track real-time metrics and KPIs throughout the product development process. By providing a comprehensive overview of project progress and aligning it with required processes, teams can identify gaps early, mitigate risks, and avoid missed requirements. With its Live Traceability™ and integrations with other best-in-breed engineering tools, Jama Connect ensures that both internal and external data are seamlessly managed, driving informed decision-making and on-time project delivery.

4. Strong Customer Support

We know that our customers need a support team that makes them a priority. That’s why Jama Connect offers unparalleled customer support (including 24/7 support for any production outages), with dedicated customer success teams that work closely with you to ensure you achieve your goals. In contrast, Codebeamer’s support can be limited, making it difficult for your teams to get the help they need when they need it.

5. Scalable and Flexible

Jama Connect is highly adaptable, making it suitable for a wide range of industries and project sizes. Whether your organization is in automotive, aerospace, medical devices, or another industry, Jama Connect can be tailored to meet your specific needs, often getting you up-and-running quickly with custombuilt data frameworks to satisfy your industries regulations and best practices. Additionally, the platform offers flexible deployment options, including cloud and self-hosted, giving you the freedom to choose the best setup for your organization.

6. Fastest Time to Market/ROI

Deploy Jama Connect’s easy-to-use interface in weeks, not months, with easy updates and high performance. Preconfigured frameworks are built-in to satisfy industry regulations and help teams ease the path to compliance, along with in-house industry focused subject-matter experts and exceptional customer support.

7. Lowest Total Cost of Ownership

With simple and straightforward administration and no need for custom scripting or continuous updating, Jama Connect has the lowest total cost of ownership in comparison to Codebeamer. Jama Connect scales easily without big infrastructure investment, and with unlimited no-cost access for extended internal/external stakeholders, all team members can be involved with additional costs.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS EBOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY:
The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability

[Webinar Recap] 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

Requirements Traceability – How to Go Live

This post was originally published on January 7, 2022.

Requirements Traceability – How to Go Live

Requirements traceability is required by many industry standards to ensure product quality and safety. The industry standards are based on decades of progress made in systems and quality engineering research with requirements traceability at the core. Benefits from requirements traceability are achieved if and only if traceability is used as a tool during the product development process. These benefits include greatly reduced or eliminated delays, defects, cost overruns, and rework. Here is an overview of the best practice approach to achieve Live Traceability™.

Live Traceability vs. After-the-fact Traceability

Let’s start with some definitions to make sure we are all on the same page. Requirement traceability is defined as tracking the development progress of product requirements from definition and design through development, testing, verification, and validation. There are two forms of requirement traceability: after-the-fact traceability and Live Traceability.

  • After-the-fact traceability occurs after the product has been developed and is typically a highly manual effort to try and re-create artifacts to demonstrate traceability that should have occurred during the development process but did not. This effort is undertaken solely for complying with industry standards and satisfying auditor requests for demonstration of process maturity.
  • Live Traceability occurs in real time as the product development process progresses to improve overall productivity (by ensuring engineers across disciplines are always working off the most recent and correct versions) and to reduce the risk of negative product outcomes (delays, defects, rework, cost overruns, recalls, etc.) through early detection of issues. The benefits of early detection of issues are significant. Research by INCOSE found that issues not found until verification and validation are 40 to 110 times more costly than if found during design. For this reason, most companies want Live Traceability but are stuck with legacy tools and spreadsheets that do not support it. Since each engineering discipline is allowed to choose its own tooling, the result is a large number of tools with no relationship rules or mechanisms to create Live Traceability across them.

RELATED POST: Requirements Management Guide: Requirements Traceability

So how do you achieve Live Traceability?

Step 1: Define a Traceability Model

Live Traceability requires a model of the key process elements and their relationship rules to monitor during the development process. The systems engineering V Model is a useful framework to start with for data object and relationship definition. Jama Connect® uniquely provides a point and click, configurable, relationship rule capability to enable Live Traceability. Below you see a sample relationship rule diagram from Jama Connect. Relationship rules vary by industry and company-specific requirements. Best practice templates are provided to comply with industry standards and configured to meet client-specific needs. The definition of a traceability model forms the foundation for model-based systems engineering since it defines model elements and their relationship to each other in a consistent manner across the entire system architecture.

Step 2: Setup Continuous Sync for Siloed Tools/Spreadsheets

Once the relationship rules are defined, the next step is to set up continuous sync with best-of-breed tools and spreadsheets used by the various engineering disciplines. The traceability diagram below shows a typical example of best-of-breed tools and where they sync in the Jama Connect relationship model to deliver Live Traceability.

Most companies prioritize the areas of the traceability model that are most prone to lead to costly issues in the absence of a continuous sync. Most commonly, these areas are:

  • Software task management – directly linking the decomposition of requirements into user stories enables Live Traceability through the software development process through testing and defect management. The most common best-of-breed tools used are Jira and Azure Dev Ops.
  • Test automation – test cases are managed in Jama Connect to align to requirements and ensure traceability across all engineering disciplines with the test automation results sync’d to the traceability model at the verification step. The most common test automation tools are TestRail and qTest.
  • Risk analysis (DFMEA/FMEA) – is most often conducted in multiple Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and the assumption has been that Live Traceability was not possible with Excel. Jama Connect is the first requirements management solution to enable Live Traceability with Excel functions and spreadsheets. Risk teams can now work in their preferred spreadsheets AND for the first time achieve live traceability to stay in sync with changes made by any engineering team. Ansys Medini is also a supported integration.
  • Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) – the first step in MBSE is to define a relationship model between all product requirements. Once a relationship model is defined, then specifications can be determined through modeling. Jama Connect uniquely provides model-based requirements to sync logically with a SysML modeling tool like Cameo No Magic. Other requirements management tools do not ensure a model-based approach, which most often leads to inconsistent and conflicting fields across teams and projects and provides no coherent relationship model.

Step 3: Monitor for Exceptions

Live Traceability provides the ability, for the first time, to manage by exception the end-to-end product development process across all engineering disciplines. The traceability model defines expected process behavior that can be compared to actual activity to generate exceptions. These exceptions are the early warning indicators of issues that most often lead to delays, cost overruns, rework, defects, and recalls. Below is a view of our Live Trace Explorer that shows you the LIVE state of development for any level of the development project you choose – from the entire cross-discipline effort down to a specific sub-component. Areas of greatest risk appear in red to show where requirement or verification coverage is lacking. Traceability is now a measurement that can be managed and improved with an overall Traceability Score and coverage and verification percentages..

Benefits of Live Traceability

The main benefits of Live Traceability across best-of-breed tools are as follows:

  • Reduce the risk of delays, cost overruns, rework, defects, and recalls with early detection of issues through exception management and save 40 to 110 times the cost of issues identified late in the process.
  • Comply with industry standards with no after-the-fact manual effort.
  • No disruption to engineering teams that continue working in their chosen best-of-breed tools with no need to change tools, fields, values or processes.
  • Increase productivity and satisfaction of engineers with the confidence that they are always working on the latest version, reflective of all changes and comments.

LEARN MORE


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

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!

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

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

Understanding UL 4600: Ensuring Safety for Autonomous Products

Understanding UL 4600: Ensuring Safety for Autonomous Products

The rapid development of autonomous technology has ushered in a new era of innovation, promising to transform industries ranging from transportation to manufacturing. However, with great innovation comes the paramount responsibility of ensuring the safety and reliability of these autonomous systems. Enter UL 4600, a comprehensive standard dedicated to evaluating the safety of autonomous products. In this blog post, we’ll explore the significance of UL 4600 and how it contributes to the safety and trustworthiness of autonomous technology.

What is UL 4600?

UL 4600, titled “Standard for Safety for the Evaluation of Autonomous Products,” is a set of guidelines and criteria developed by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to assess the safety of fully autonomous systems. This standard provides a framework for evaluating the safety of autonomous products, including but not limited to self-driving vehicles, industrial robots, and drones. It aims to address the unique challenges posed by the complexity and unpredictability of autonomous technology.

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

Key Components

UL 4600 is built upon several critical components designed to ensure the comprehensive evaluation of autonomous products:

  • Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment: UL 4600 requires a thorough analysis of potential hazards associated with the autonomous system. This includes identifying risks, assessing their severity, and implementing mitigation strategies to reduce or eliminate those risks.
  • Safety Case Framework: One of the cornerstone elements of UL 4600 is the creation of a safety case. A safety case is a structured argument, supported by evidence, that an autonomous system is safe for its intended use. This involves documenting safety goals, hazard analysis, risk assessments, and validation and verification activities.
  • Verification and Validation: UL 4600 emphasizes rigorous verification and validation processes to ensure that the autonomous system performs as intended and meets safety requirements. This includes testing under various scenarios, simulations, and real-world trials.
  • Continuous Monitoring and Updates: Autonomous systems operate in dynamic environments. UL 4600 mandates continuous monitoring and updating of the system to address new hazards, software updates, and changes in operating conditions.
  • Transparency and Documentation: Transparency is crucial in establishing trust in autonomous systems. UL 4600 requires comprehensive documentation of the design, development, testing, and deployment processes. This documentation serves as evidence of the system’s safety and reliability.

The Importance of UL 4600

The implementation of this standard is vital for several reasons:

  • Safety Assurance: Autonomous systems interact with humans and other systems in unpredictable ways. UL 4600 provides a robust framework to ensure that these systems operate safely and mitigate potential risks effectively.
  • Trust Building: As autonomous technology becomes more prevalent, public trust is essential for widespread adoption. Compliance with UL 4600 demonstrates a commitment to safety and can help build trust among consumers, regulators, and stakeholders.
  • Regulatory Compliance: Many industries are subject to regulatory oversight. UL 4600 helps organizations meet or exceed regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of non-compliance and potential legal consequences.
  • Market Advantage: Companies that adhere to UL 4600 standards can differentiate themselves in the market by showcasing their dedication to safety and reliability. This can be a significant competitive advantage in industries where safety is paramount.

Challenges and Future Directions

While UL 4600 provides a comprehensive framework for evaluating the safety of autonomous products, it is not without challenges. The rapid pace of technological advancement means that standards must evolve continually to address new risks and scenarios. Additionally, the complexity of autonomous systems requires ongoing collaboration between industry experts, regulators, and standards organizations.

Looking ahead, the future of UL 4600 lies in its adaptability and integration with other emerging standards and technologies. As artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sensor technologies continue to advance, UL 4600 will play a crucial role in ensuring that autonomous systems remain safe and reliable.

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

Conclusion

UL 4600 represents a significant step forward in the journey towards safe and reliable autonomous technology. By providing a structured framework for hazard analysis, risk assessment, verification, validation, and continuous monitoring, UL 4600 helps ensure that autonomous systems can operate safely in complex and dynamic environments. As the autonomous revolution continues, adherence to standards like UL 4600 will be essential in building the trust and confidence needed for widespread adoption and success.

By understanding and implementing the principles of UL 4600, developers, manufacturers, and stakeholders can navigate the challenges of autonomous technology while prioritizing safety and reliability. This commitment to safety will pave the way for a future where autonomous systems enhance our lives while operating with the highest standards of safety and integrity.

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

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

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!

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

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.

In this blog, we recap our webinar, “Building the Blueprint: Applying Requirements Management in the AEC Industry” – Click HERE to watch it in its entirety.

What does effective requirements management look like in the AEC industry?

Discover how Jama Connect® is transforming requirements management for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) projects by streamlining processes, enhancing collaboration, and tackling the industry’s unique challenges — from managing complex stakeholder needs and ensuring compliance to saving time, reducing costly rework, and minimizing project risks.

In this webinar, experts Patrick Garman, Principal Solutions Consultant, and Joe Gould, Senior Account Executive from Jama Software, share insights and demonstrate Jama Connect’s powerful capabilities tailored for the AEC industry.

What you’ll learn:

  • Streamlined approaches to capturing, verifying, and tracking requirements
  • Techniques for reducing costly rework through inefficient project management
  • Ways to enhance team collaboration in complex projects
  • Strategies to ensure regulatory compliance through the project lifecycle
  • Insights from real-world case studies and industry-specific examples for successful AEC project delivery

BELOW IS AN ABBREVIATED SECTION OF THIS TRANSCRIPT

Building the Blueprint: Applying Requirements Management in the AEC Industry

Joe Gould: Let’s start by examining a critical aspect of our industry and that’s regulations in AEC. Understand why they’re so vital to our work in the broader community. Regulations in the AEC industry serve multiple essential purposes. First, keeping people safe. Organizations like OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, establish regulations to ensure the safety and accessibility of construction sites. In 2023, OSHA charged businesses $132.3 million for violations of its 10 most cited regulations. This substantial figure underscores the importance of adhering to safety standards to protect our workers and the public.

Second, ensuring structures last. Local building codes in the International Building Code, or IBC, set the standards for durability and longevity of structures. Failure to meet these standards can lead to severe penalties ranging from monetary fines to criminal charges. So ensuring compliance not only avoids these penalties but also guarantees the integrity and safety of the buildings that we design and that we construct.

Third, preserving our natural environment regulations from the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and LEED, Leadership and Energy Environmental Design, are designed to protect our environment. Penalties for violating environmental regulations can be severe with fines up to $250,000 and prison sentences of up to 15 years. Compliance helps us minimize our environmental footprint and contribute to sustainable development.

Last, providing financial protection for all involved. Regulations enforced by the FTC, Federal Trade Commission, and EEOC, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ensure that all parties involved in construction projects receive fair compensation for their work. These regulations aim to promote fairness and transparency, ensuring that everyone from contractors to laborers are paid appropriately. Non-compliance can result in project delays and financial losses.

RELATED: Whitepaper Six Key Challenges in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) Industry and How to Solve Them with Jama Connect

Gould: The importance of adhering to these regulations cannot be overstated. These aren’t just bureaucratic hurdles. They’re the foundation of a safe, sustainable, and fair construction industry. And by following these regulations, we protect our workers, ensure the longevity and safety of our structures, preserve our environment, and promote fairness and financial integrity within our projects.

Construction is one of the most heavily regulated industries that exist. On top of regulations, the process of completing a long-term project requires an astronomical paper trail. However, this paper trail ensures that everything is done properly and that every worker is paid accordingly. To accommodate all of these moving parts, you need a dependable requirements management system to keep it all organized. As we navigate the dynamic landscape of AEC, there are various factors that contribute to the alterations and project requirements. Design modifications, compliance updates, stakeholder feedback, and other elements play a significant role in shaping project timelines and outcomes. Understanding these drivers is crucial for adapting to evolving project needs and ensuring successful project delivery. So let’s take a deeper look into the opportunity within the AEC industry.

There is a significant opportunity within the construction industry that has the potential to transform our sector and drive substantial economic growth. So let’s start with some key statistics that highlight the current landscape. 13% of the world’s GDP is driven by construction-related spending, 13%! This figure underscores the immense scale and economic importance of our industry globally. However, despite this substantial contribution, there’s a glaring productivity gap that we have to address. Over the past 20 years, the construction sector’s annual growth has increased by just 1%. This stagnant growth rate indicates that we are not maximizing our potential and that there are significant inefficiencies that are holding us back.

This brings us to the most compelling figure. There is a $1.6 trillion global opportunity to boost productivity in the construction sector annually. This isn’t just a number, this is a call to action. Imagine what we could achieve with an additional $1.6 trillion in value each year. It would revolutionize our industry, leading to faster project completion, reduce cost, and enhance profitability. The question we have to ask ourselves is how can we tap into this vast opportunity.

RELATED: AEC Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements and Compliance Management Solution for Complex Projects

Gould: Did you know that inadequate scope management can lead to significant cost escalations? According to McKinsey and Company, up to 20% of project costs can be attributed to scope adjustments. However, with Jama Connect we can save time and money by mitigating scope-related issues. So let’s explore how effective requirements management can be a game changer in controlling project costs.

See, we have a requirements management problem and we don’t even know that we have a problem. There’s a better way than managing this through a series of documents. Jama Connect is a purpose-built tool to centralize all project requirements from the inception of a project through commissioning. Imagine a world where scope creep, inconsistent documentation, and communication gaps no longer hinder project success. With Jama Connect, we step into a realm of streamlined communication, stakeholder alignment, and precise cost estimation. And by centralizing project requirements, Jama Connect acts as a beacon of clarity guiding us through the maze of regulatory compliance and project intricacies.

In the realm of AEC projects, focus, traceability, collaboration, and compliance play pivotal roles in ensuring successful outcomes. Jama Connect stands as a proven solution offering end-to-end traceability and requirements reuse for complex projects. So as we navigate the intricate landscape of construction, let’s explore how Jama Connect revolutionizes the way that we capture, manage, and validate requirements.

WATCH THIS WEBINAR IN ITS ENTIRETY:
Building the Blueprint: Applying Requirements Management in the AEC Industry