Jama Connect^® Named #1 in G2 Fall 2025 Requirements Management Report

We are thrilled to announce that Jama Connect has once again been recognized as the undisputed #1 leader in G2’s Fall 2025 Grid^® Report for Requirements Management Software. This achievement marks our seventh consecutive quarter at the top, a direct result of the trust and feedback from our valued customers.

This continued leadership solidifies our standing ahead of competitors like Polarion, IBM^® DOORS^®, and Codebeamer. Your reviews and partnership have propelled us to the forefront of the industry, and for that, we are immensely grateful.

Explore the full G2 Fall 2025 Grid Report for Requirements Management Software!

A Testament to Customer Trust and Strong Relationships

G2 reports are a powerful reflection of the user experience, compiling authentic reviews and data to rank software solutions. Being named a leader is a significant honor because it comes directly from the people who use our platform every day to build the next generation of innovative products.

In the Fall 2025 report, Jama Connect’s performance was exceptional, earning accolades that highlight our strong customer partnerships and global reach. We didn’t just maintain our leadership position; we expanded our recognition across multiple new categories.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: How to Select the Right Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Leading the Way: A Look at Our Fall 2025 Badges

Our success this quarter is a testament to the versatility and power of Jama Connect. We are proud to have earned badges across several key areas, demonstrating our strength for businesses of all sizes, worldwide.

Here are the accolades we received in the G2 Fall 2025 report:

• Overall Leader: For the seventh straight quarter, we are the #1 solution in Requirements Management. We also earned Leader badges for Enterprise, Mid-Market, and Small Business segments.
• Best Relationship: This new recognition underscores our commitment to partnership. We received this badge for Overall, Enterprise, and Mid-Market, reflecting the high-quality support and collaboration our customers experience.
• Regional Leader: Our global presence is stronger than ever. We were named a Regional Leader in Asia Pacific, EMEA, and Europe, showing our platform’s effectiveness across international markets.
• Momentum Leader: This badge recognizes our continued growth and innovation in the market, proving we are consistently evolving to meet modern development challenges.

Voices from Our Community

The praise and constructive feedback from our users on G2 are the driving force behind our innovation. Your insights help us refine our platform and better serve your needs. Here is what some of our users have been saying:

“Jama Connect is a powerful tool for requirements management and offers a wide range of features. Until now, the traceability of requirements was very difficult or even impossible. Jama Connect solves this problem 100%.” – Verified User, Renewables & Environment, Enterprise

“In the past, all requirement-related information was scattered across Jira, Confluence, Word, and Excel, making it difficult to know whether anything was truly up to date. With Jama Connect, we have centralized most of this information into a single, reliable source of truth. The transition is still ongoing, but the shift in mindset is already bringing greater clarity, consistency, and confidence to our work.” – Verified User in Manufacturing, Mid-Market

Driving Modern Requirements Management Forward

This G2 recognition reinforces our mission to help organizations move beyond outdated, document-centric processes. Jama Connect provides a modern platform designed for the complexities of today’s product development landscape.

With Jama Connect, teams can:

• Improve clarity and collaboration with a single source of truth.
• Ensure complete traceability across requirements, risks, and tests.
• Streamline compliance with industry-specific regulations and standards.
• Accelerate development cycles without compromising quality.

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

A Sincere Thank You to Our Customers

We could not have achieved this milestone without you. Your partnership, feedback, and trust are the cornerstones of our success. These G2 awards are not just for us; they are a shared victory for every team using Jama Connect to solve complex challenges and build amazing products.

Thank you for making us the #1 choice for requirements management. We are committed to continuing this journey of excellence with you.

Learn More

See for yourself how Jama Connect leads the competition. Explore the complete G2 Fall 2025 Grid Report for Requirements Management Software today.

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

This Blog Is a Preview of Our Recent Whitepaper, “Mastering Variant Management for Product Line Success” – To Read the Entire Asset, Click HERE

Mastering Variant Management for Product Line Success

The complexity of modern product lines is driving the need for effective variant management.

Explore how organizations can thrive by managing diverse product variants efficiently while addressing market, regulatory, and customer demands. Leveraging expert strategies, including structured feature models, reuse tactics, and traceability approaches, this guide equips businesses with the tools needed to streamline product development processes while maintaining quality and compliance.

Variant management is particularly crucial in industries like automotive, consumer electronics, and software, where organizations must balance innovation with efficiency. By adopting proven methodologies and leveraging advanced tools like Jama Connect^®, businesses can reduce complexity, ensure compliance, and optimize product line strategies.

This whitepaper provides actionable insights into how investing in variant management can yield a competitive advantage and fuel growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Identify and adapt variants to address diverse customer and market needs.
• Streamline product development with smart reuse and cross-team alignment.
• Reduce complexity while maintaining traceability across product lines.
• Ensure compliance in rapidly evolving regulatory environments.
• Gain visibility to optimize product strategies and decision-making.

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

Discover how your organization can unlock the potential of efficient variant management and take the next step in product line engineering innovation.

Effective product line engineering is a strategic approach that empowers businesses to manage complex product portfolios with efficiency and precision. By addressing diverse market demands, streamlining development processes, and ensuring compliance amidst evolving regulations, organizations can achieve a competitive edge in today’s dynamic industries.

Central to this approach is the concept of variant management, which simplifies complexity, strengthens collaboration, and drives innovation across teams.

The ability to reuse and align product components across teams is not just a matter of efficiency but a necessity in maintaining agility. With better visibility into product strategies and calculated decision-making, businesses are better positioned to adapt and thrive.

By leveraging robust variant management practices, teams can maximize reuse, reduce inefficiencies, and maintain a competitive edge.

With expertise in variant management, product managers and engineers can effectively tackle pressing organizational challenges, enabling their businesses to stay ahead in the market while scaling operations intelligently.

“Product companies utilizing single-system engineering and management approaches may end up with highly complex and low-quality products, low productivity, high employee turnover, and less than expected customer satisfaction.” – ISO/IEC 26550:2015(E) (SSPL) Software and systems engineering — Reference model for product line engineering and management

Why Businesses Need Effective Variant Management

Variant management is a critical component of modern business strategy, especially in industries characterized by high variability and complexity. A well-structured approach to managing product variants can enable companies to respond efficiently to dynamic market demands, adhere to increasing regulatory constraints, and meet evolving customer needs.

The pressures businesses face today are numerous and interconnected. For instance, market demands have grown rapidly, with customers expecting highly customized products and shortened lead times. Without effective variant management, businesses risk falling behind competitors who are better equipped to deliver tailored solutions. Additionally, regulatory constraints, particularly in industries such as automotive and healthcare, require meticulous compliance that can only be achieved through streamlined product configurations and robust tracking mechanisms. Businesses must also grapple with changing customer preferences, which necessitate agility in the design and delivery of new product variants.

Data supports the notion that inefficient variant management can have severe financial and operational repercussions. Companies struggling with outdated or manual processes often see rising costs, delays in production, and errors in product delivery. For example, a case study in the automotive sector highlighted how poor variant management led to production bottlenecks, ultimately delaying vehicle deliveries and incurring significant reputational damage. Similarly, in the semiconductor industry, the inability to manage design variants efficiently increased engineering costs and time to market, diminishing competitive advantage.

Conversely, businesses adopting advanced techniques and tools for variant management have demonstrated remarkable improvements. The automotive industry provides a notable example, where companies leveraging advanced configuration systems reduced production errors and improved time-to-market metrics. Semiconductor companies employing automated design variation tools saw reduced development cycles, enabling them to remain leaders in innovation while containing costs.

Effective variant management is not just an operational necessity — it is an enabler of long-term strategic success. By addressing the challenges of market demands, regulatory compliance, and customer expectations with data-driven strategies, companies can secure both competitive and financial advantages in even the most complex industries.

Studies have shown that organizations leveraging robust variant management strategies can experience up to a 20% reduction in production time and a 15% decrease in overall costs, according to recent industry analyses. Furthermore, a survey conducted by Deloitte highlighted that 85% of companies implementing advanced variant management systems reported improved customer satisfaction due to better customization options and faster delivery times. These metrics underscore the tangible benefits of adopting data-driven approaches to variant management, emphasizing the critical role they play in enhancing operational efficiency and fostering innovation.

Effectively managing product variants requires overcoming significant challenges, especially in areas such as traceability, operational inefficiencies, and collaboration across teams. These obstacles can hinder innovation, escalate costs, and delay critical processes, ultimately impacting market competitiveness.

RELATED: The Strategic Transition: From Word and Excel to Modern Requirements Management

Mitigating Traceability and Quality Assurance Issues

Navigating the complexities of tracking changes across multiple product variants is critical. Without a centralized system, it becomes nearly impossible to maintain visibility and ensure quality across diverse versions. Version control gaps can lead to costly errors, regulatory challenges, or even safety risks, particularly in highly regulated industries. A robust variant management solution provides the tools to document and trace changes efficiently, ensuring comprehensive oversight for all stakeholders involved.

Streamlining Inefficient Processes

Inefficient processes not only increase time-to-market but also inflate development costs and risk inconsistencies that impact customer satisfaction. Leveraging a purpose-built solution ensures that all teams have access to aligned workflows and automated updates, creating a streamlined development cycle. Effective management reduces redundancies, accelerates decision-making, and enables a focus on delivering high-quality products faster.

Bridging Alignment Gaps Across Teams

Communication breakdowns often arise when managing multiple product lines across geographically dispersed or cross-functional teams. Maintaining synchronized collaboration ensures everyone operates from a single source of truth, reducing misunderstandings and keeping deliverables on track. Solutions that foster seamless collaboration help establish a unified framework, bridging the gap between engineering, design, and compliance teams.

“Before using Jama Connect, it was a constant struggle to manage the sheer complexity of variant tracking and communication between teams. Adopting a tailored solution transformed our workflow, helping us cut time-to-market by almost 30% while maintaining traceability across all versions.” – Jama Connect Customer

Overcoming these challenges with modern variant management tools empowers organizations to innovate efficiently while keeping costs and risks in check. Such systems provide the structure needed to scale operations without compromising quality or alignment, ensuring long-term success in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Ready to Learn The Solution for Best Practices for Variant Management? Download the Entire Whitepaper:
Mastering Variant Management for Product Line Success

Impact and change Analysis are two important concepts in requirements management. Understanding how a change made to one requirement, impacts the upstream and downstream relationships is essential in assessing the scope a change may make.  What happens when a change IS made to an upstream requirement, and you are a downstream stakeholder? How will you know and how can you manage this change? This is where suspect notification plays an integral role in informing users of changes to the requirements that they care about. 

RELATED POST: The Essential Guide to Requirements Management

When relationship links are established between requirements, Jama Connect users can utilize the Impact Analysis feature to inform them as to the downstream or upstream impact of changes to a particular requirement. This helps to indicate the scope a particular change may make across the system of linkages. If suspect linking is enabled, and a change is made, users are alerted of these changes through various indicators and views in Jama Connect:  

• Displayed in the Relationship Indicator column with a red exclamation point icon (which you can hover over to see how the item violates relationship rules.)
• Displayed in the individual requirement in the “Relationship” view as “Causing Suspect” for each linked requirement that is suspect. 
• Displayed as a Project-wide view under “Project > Suspect Links” 

If a linked requirement is marked suspect, users can take advantage of Jama Connects’s Compare Versions feature and get a side-by-side visual comparison of the changes between versions of requirements to determine what has changed. This allows them to assess the impact of the change that caused the suspect and make appropriate changes to the linked requirements.  A good example of this is if a set of verification tests are linked downstream to a functional requirement. If a change to the details of the functional requirement is changed, then all downstream verifications will be marked suspect, and the test lead can impact the change and update the tests accordingly. When the changes are complete, the suspect link can be “cleared” (either individually or in bulk). This ability to control and react to change is especially important in meeting regulatory standards, such as DO178C, ISO26262, ISO 13485 (and many others). We cannot assume requirements are static and must have visibility to what changed, and the impact that change will have.   

Suspect linking can be configured in the Jama Connect Org Admin setting, per item type field. This allows for granular flexibility for users to set which field changes will trigger a suspect link. This level of flexibility is extremely important as it allows users to define suspect rules according to their process and what fields are essential to track for change. 

Conclusion: 

Don’t let suspicious requirements scare you! Understand that they are an important part of the requirements change process and are there to help you control and react to updates made to linked requirements.  Let’s face it, requirements change, and getting a clear understanding of when something changes and what changed is essential. 

What is Requirements Management Planning

Requirements Management Planning is the process of documenting how you will gather, analyze, document and manage the requirements of a project, manage changes to requirements once they have been approved, manage the configuration of the requirements documentation, and track verification of the project’s requirements.

Requirements Management Plan

Product success depends upon the successful project management of the product’s requirements. Effective requirements management, in turn, requires thoughtful planning.

A requirements management plan describes how you will gather, analyze, document, and manage the requirements of the project. It should describe how you intend to gather the high-level project and product requirements from project stakeholders, industry standards and governmental regulations, as well as the more detailed product requirements you will collect and develop over the project lifecycle. Your requirements management plan should also specify how you will manage changes to requirements after they have been approved.

Your requirements management plan is a tool for communication. It provides all your project’s stakeholders with a common understanding of how the product’s requirements will be managed to ensure success.

In this article, we’ll describe the requirements management planning and the recommended components of a requirements management plan.

Components of a requirements management plan

A solid requirements management plan will be composed of several components. Here, we’ll describe our recommended sections. Depending upon your industry and organization, not all of these sections may apply to your situation. 

Project overview

Briefly describe the purpose of the project. Explain the need the product will fill for the customer or target market and how its development will benefit your company. Mention important goals for the project and any notable constraints that may have been imposed upon it.

Roles and responsibilities

This section lists the roles of those who will be involved with managing the requirements through the rest of the project lifecycle, along with the responsibilities of each role.

Typical roles include: 

• Project manager
• Lead analyst / lead requirements engineer
• Analyst / requirements engineer
• Stakeholder

The project manager typically has overall responsibility for managing the scope of the requirements for the project.

The lead analyst / lead requirements engineer may also be a lead systems engineer or lead developer. This role is generally given overall responsibility for requirements development and integrity.

Analysts and requirements engineers assist the lead analyst / lead requirements engineer and are typically tasked with following the specified procedures for managing the subset of the project’s requirements for which they have been given responsibility.

Other project stakeholders who provide input to the requirements base are generally given responsibility for reviewing the requirements at specified milestones.

Tools

In this section of your plan, describe any automated tools that will be used to manage the requirements. Provide a brief overview of how those tools will be used during the requirements management process, and reference any documented procedures governing the use of the tools.

More detailed descriptions of how the tools shall be used in the various steps of the process should be provided in the sections of the plan that describe those steps.

Requirements gathering

Describe the process that you will use to elicit, analyze and document the requirements. Then, describe the requirements gathering techniques you will use and with what groups you will use them.

RELATED POST: 11 Requirements Gathering Techniques for Agile Product Teams

Categorization and assignment

Here, you will describe your process and procedures for dealing with various types of requirements.

Describe how requirements will be categorized within your requirements management system. Typical categories include:

• Functional
• Non-functional
• Internal
• External
• Regulatory
• Performance
• Quality
• Training
• Support
• Maintenance

The difference between functional and non-functional requirements—what the product must do versus any constraints on how the product must be constructed—normally impacts how the requirement will be verified. For more information on non-functional requirements and their impact on product development, click here. 

Internal requirements will generally be driven by the needs of stakeholders within your organization. External requirements will include those driven by customers, market forces, government regulations industry standards, etc.

A requirement’s category will dictate, in part, how it is assigned for development, implementation and verification. Your plan should describe your policies and procedures for assigning requirements to subsystems or components or by work breakdown structure (WBS).

Prioritization

Companies will prioritize the fulfillment of some requirements over others. Reasons for high prioritization may include market demand, regulatory compliance, contractual obligation, or internal stakeholder need.

That’s why it’s important to plan and document how you will prioritize requirements for development and release. Keep in mind that you will likely describe in detail your rules for prioritizing requirements in your Product Requirements Document. 

Traceability

Describe your overall process for tracing requirements throughout the product lifecycle: from gathering, through decomposition, development, implementation and verification. Mention the tools to be used to accomplish the traceability process. 

Requirements and their attributes need to be tracked throughout the project lifecycle to ensure fulfillment. Attributes to be tracked may include:

• Name
• Type
• Project unique identifier
• Source (stakeholder, document, parent requirement, etc.)
• Children (lower level requirements derived from the requirement)
• Assigned element of the WBS where it will be addressed
• Verification method (if your project requires a variety of methods)
• Verification reference (to the procedure that will verify the requirement)
• Compliance reference (applicable regulations/paragraphs)

RELATED POST: What Is Requirements Traceability and Why Does It Matter for Product Teams

Change management

As a project evolves, requirements will need to be added or modified. Therefore, your requirements management plan should include a section that describes your policies and procedures for change control.

Change management (or change control) generally involves documenting each proposed requirements change in a change request. Once written, the change request is analyzed by affected stakeholders for any possible impact on project objectives or other requirements. The change request then goes before a change control board where it is either accepted (to be implemented) or rejected (and either revised or dropped). Your procedures for change control (raising, reviewing, tracking and approving change requests) should be described or referenced in this section.

Configuration management

Describe how you will monitor and control changes to your requirements documentation. Configuration management deals primarily with how documents will be revised and released during a project.

For many projects, depending upon your organization, this section may be combined with the Change Management section just described. For very large projects, you may want a separate Configuration Management section. If you have a separate Configuration Management Plan you’ll probably want to reference it and keep this section brief.

Verification

Finally, describe the methods and metrics you will use to verify requirements. Specify how their achievement will be measured, tested, etc.

If you use a variety of verification methods to verify different types of requirements, you will likely want to give a brief explanation of the procedures for each and how each type of verification is documented.

Benefits of requirements management planning

As mentioned earlier, your requirements management plan is a tool for communication. It helps your analysts, systems engineers and developers get up to speed and stay on the same page when it comes to managing your project’s requirements. Plus, it gives higher-level stakeholders a warm, fuzzy feeling that your product’s requirements will be properly managed to ensure your product’s success.

For more in-depth information…

Requirements management and requirements management planning can be greatly simplified through the use of a state-of-the-art requirements management tool like Jama Connect. For a deeper dive, visit our Essential Guide to Requirements Management! 

Legacy Requirements Tools Present Modern Performance Challenges

When evaluating requirements management platforms, response time emerges as a critical factor that influences user adoption, team efficiency, and project success. Today’s modern engineering projects demand more than legacy solutions can deliver. The speed at which teams can access, modify, and collaborate on requirements directly impacts project timelines, quality outcomes, and overall productivity.

Understanding Response Time in Requirements Management

Response time in requirements management refers to the speed at which a system processes user requests, displays information, and enables collaborative activities. This is comprised of several key indicators:

• System Responsiveness: The time required to load requirements, modules, collections, folders, execute searches, and navigate between different sections of the application.
• Collaboration Efficiency: How quickly team members can access shared requirements, make modifications, and see updates from stakeholders and team members.
• Scalability Under Load: The system’s ability to maintain acceptable performance levels as project complexity increases, and more users access the platform simultaneously. Modern engineering projects often involve thousands of requirements, multiple stakeholders, and tight integrations with various development or System Modeling Tools. Slow response times can create bottlenecks that cascade through the entire development process.

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

Legacy Architecture and Performance Characteristics

Tools such as IBM^® DOORS^® have established themselves as a requirements management standard across many industries, particularly in aerospace, automotive, and defense sectors. However, the architecture is a reflection of design decisions made decades ago, which impacts response time characteristics.

Performance Profile

DOORS operates on a client-server architecture that was optimized for local network environments. Users frequently report noticeable delays when:

• Loading large requirements modules with complex hierarchies
• Performing cross-project searches across multiple projects
• Generating reports that span numerous requirement sets
• Simple tasks, such as expanding projects and folders

The system’s reliance on a proprietary database and queries for basic operations can result in response times that vary significantly based on database size, network conditions, and concurrent user activity. Unchecked DXL scripts can also be a point of performance degradation and require frequent updating and maintenance.

User Experience Feedback

Teams using DOORS consistently highlight response time as a primary concern. Common feedback includes:

• Extended wait times when opening large requirement sets
• Delays in search functionality, particularly for complex queries
• Slow performance during peak usage periods
• Timeout issues when generating comprehensive reports

These performance limitations often force teams to work around the system rather than with it, leading to decreased productivity and compliance issues.

Jama Connect^®: Modern Architecture for Enhanced Performance

Jama Connect represents a new generation of requirements management tools, with a modern UI and high performing architecture. This foundation enables significantly improved response times across various operational scenarios.

Architecture Advantages

Jama Connect’s browser-based interface and modern backend infrastructure deliver several performance benefits:

• Optimized Data Handling: Jama Connect uses advanced caching mechanisms and efficient data structures to minimize loading times for requirements documents and related artifacts.
• Real-Time Collaboration: Built-in mechanisms for live updates and collaborative workflows, such as the Review Center, reduce the latency typically associated with multi-user environments.
• Flexible Infrastructure Options: On-Prem and hosted options allow for flexibility when it comes to organizational needs. Jama Connect is certified at SOC 2 as an application and for its hosting environment.
• Streamlined Integration: Out-of-the-box integration with systems modeling tools and other best-of-breed applications.
• RESTful API: Modern API design enables faster synchronization with external tools and systems.

Performance Metrics and User Feedback

Organizations migrating from legacy tools to Jama Connect report substantial improvements in response time metrics.

• Requirement Loading: Users experience faster access to requirements, with loading times reduced by significant margins compared to traditional tools.
• Search Performance: Advanced indexing and search algorithms deliver rapid results, even across large requirement sets.
• Collaborative Operations: Real-time updates and collaborative features, such as the review center, operate with minimal latency, enabling more efficient team workflows.
• Report Generation: Reporting capabilities process complex requirement sets more quickly than traditional approaches.

RELATED: Move to Jama Connect — A Modern Requirements Management Alternative to IBM DOORS

Comparative Analysis: Response Time Impact on Project Outcomes

Development Velocity

Teams using responsive requirements management tools demonstrate measurable improvements in development velocity. Quick access to requirements information reduces context-switching delays and enables faster decision-making throughout the development process.

Quality Assurance Efficiency

Faster response times in requirements management directly correlate with improved quality assurance processes. Teams can more efficiently trace requirements to test cases, identify coverage gaps, and maintain traceability matrices.

Stakeholder Engagement

Responsive tools encourage broader stakeholder participation in requirements review and approval processes. When accessing and reviewing requirements becomes frictionless, stakeholders are more likely to provide timely feedback and maintain engagement throughout the project lifecycle.

Cost Considerations

While modern tools may require initial investment, the productivity gains from improved response times often justify the cost through:

• Reduced time spent waiting for system responses
• Improved user adoption and reduced training overhead
• Faster project completion times
• Enhanced collaboration efficiency

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

Making the Right Choice for Your Engineering Team

Response time and performance represents just one factor in requirements management tool selection, but its impact on daily productivity makes it an essential consideration.

Teams working with complex, rapidly evolving requirements benefit most from platforms that prioritize responsiveness and real-time collaboration. The investment in modern tools often pays dividends through improved team efficiency, faster project delivery, and enhanced stakeholder satisfaction.

How Smart Companies Turn Economic Challenges into Opportunities to Get Ahead

In the past, when economic uncertainty hits, most companies instinctively tighten their belts and cut spending to prepare for the worst. But what if this conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the smartest move during tough times is actually to invest more aggressively in technology and innovation? Let’s dig into the data and lessons we can learn.

Recent research from Accenture shows overwhelmingly that companies that scaled (and some even doubling down on) their technology investments during the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just survive…they thrived, growing revenue 5X faster than their peers and competitors. And while the pandemic created a unique dynamic of economic, political, and social challenges, there are lessons here that can be learned during any economic uncertainty, including the headwinds we’re seeing right now.

It’s no secret that the pandemic wasn’t just a health crisis; it was a massive stress test for business resilience. However, companies that emerged stronger shared a lot of common characteristics, including investing heavily in cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital transformation while their competitors were thinking more shortsightedly by cutting costs.

In fact, these “LEADER” companies didn’t just weather the storm…they used it as a launching pad for unprecedented growth.

The “Leaders,” “Leapfroggers,” and the “Laggards”

Accenture’s comprehensive study included 4,300 companies across 25 countries and showed three distinct categories of technology adopters during the pandemic.

Leaders represent the top 10% of companies that had already established strong technology foundations before COVID-19. These organizations stepped up their adoption of cloud computing, AI, and IoT technologies when the crisis hit. Their strategic advantage? They were already positioned to scale quickly when opportunity knocked.

Leapfroggers make up 18% of the sample and represent perhaps the most interesting group. These companies accelerated what would typically be multi-year digital transformations into mere months. They moved aggressively (and strategically) from being technology followers to leaders, demonstrating that timing and execution matter more than just being first.

The “Laggards” are the bottom 25% of companies that only recently began investing in new technologies. The decision to invest was made primarily just to maintain basic operations during the pandemic. This “reactive” approach to technology adoption left Laggards struggling to keep pace with market changes. Many still feeling that impact now.

What we’re seeing is that the financial results speak volumes. The Leaders are now growing revenue 5X faster than Laggards — a huge increase from the 2x growth differential that existed pre-pandemic. The widening of this gap demonstrates that technology investments are creating compound advantages over (a short period of) time.

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

Strategic Technology Investments That Drove Growth

It’s also clear that the companies that succeeded during COVID-19 didn’t just increase their technology spending randomly; they made strategic investments and changes in specific areas that delivered immediate and long-term value.

Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud adoption emerged as the foundation for pandemic-era success. And for Jama Software customers, this should come as no surprise.

Among Leapfroggers, 80% had adopted some form of cloud technology by 2017, but this figure jumped to 98% by 2020. More importantly, 72% of Leaders accelerated their cloud security investments, while 68% increased their hybrid cloud spending.

This cloud-first approach provides the flexibility and scalability needed to support remote work, handle fluctuating demand, and rapidly deploy new capabilities – all of which was key to success during the pandemic, and now. Companies with robust cloud infrastructure could pivot quickly as market conditions change.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (ML)

The study showed that 59% of Leaders accelerated their AI and ML investments during the pandemic. These technologies allowed companies to analyze rapidly changing market conditions, optimize supply chains, and personalize customer experiences at scale. All factors that made the difference between success and failure during the pandemic.

AI-powered analytics helped companies identify new opportunities in real-time, while machine learning algorithms optimized everything from inventory management to customer service. Organizations who invest in these capabilities are able to make data-driven decisions faster than their competitors.

IoT and Process Automation

The research showed that 70% of Leaders increased their Internet of Things (IoT) investments, while 60% accelerated (or invested in) robotic process automation (RPA) adoption. The outcome was that these technologies eliminated manual processes, reduced errors, and freed up human resources for higher-value activities.

The companies who invested in process improvement saw incredible outcomes. IoT sensors provided real-time visibility into operations, enabling predictive maintenance and optimized resource allocation. RPA handled routine tasks, allowing employees to focus on strategic initiatives and customer relationships. The investments paid dividends.

Investments in Collaboration

While collaboration may feel like a “soft skill” investment, it can make a huge difference to your bottom line.

70% of leading companies looked to aggressively increase funding for training to build an agile and collaborative organization. By prioritizing employee development and leveraging digital collaboration tools, these organizations foster better communication, faster decision-making, and more cohesive teamwork.

Examples of these investments included virtual platforms, real-time communication technologies, and programs that encouraged cross-functional alignment. The result? Improved project execution, enhanced innovation, and stronger connections across distributed teams, driving both operational efficiency and global scalability.

Three Strategic Imperatives for Digital Transformation

The research shows that the most successful companies during the pandemic followed three key strategic imperatives. These are the lessons that can guide any organization through economic uncertainty. Let’s call these the 3 Rs.

(R) Replatform to the Cloud

Leaders moved beyond basic cloud adoption to build what Accenture calls “Systems Strength.” This means reducing redundant technologies (maybe this can be our 4th R), eliminating disconnected data silos, and gaining the computing power and flexibility that cloud platforms provide.

But cloud replatforming isn’t just about moving existing systems to the cloud — it’s about rethinking (or reimagining) how technology supports business objectives.

Companies that approach cloud migration strategically can easily scale resources up or down based on demand, experiment with new capabilities quickly, and integrate disparate systems more effectively.

(R) Reframe with Innovation-First Strategy

Successful companies shifted from viewing technology as a cost center to treating it as a growth engine. 67% of Leapfroggers sought to aggressively increase revenue from non-core business lines, using technology to explore new markets and business models.

This innovation-first mindset encourages experimentation and rapid iteration – and it clearly pays off. Companies that embrace this approach can test new products, services, and market strategies without massive upfront investments.

(R) Reach Across All Business Functions

Technology investments delivered the greatest returns when they extended across entire organizations rather than being confined to IT departments. 65% of Leaders prioritized employee happiness through digital-based flexible work arrangements, compared to just 43% of Laggards.

This holistic approach to technology adoption creates seamless interactions between humans and machines, improved collaboration across departments, and built organizational capabilities that support long-term growth. There’s that “soft skill” investment again, paying off handsomely.

RELATED: Best Practices for Live Requirements Traceability

Prioritizing Employee Experience and Collaboration

If you’re reading this, we don’t have to tell you that the pandemic fundamentally changed how people work, and successful companies recognized that technology investments must support human needs as well as business objectives. We’re all living proof of that.

Digital-First Work Arrangements

Companies that thrived during COVID-19 didn’t just enable remote work; they reimagined work itself, perhaps for the first time in decades. They invested in collaboration platforms, digital communication tools, and virtual meeting technologies that made distributed teams as effective as co-located ones. While some company leaders feared working from home might decrease productivity, those who embraced the new way of working saw that employees actually adapted quickly and efficiently to the change. Many employees found that without office distractions, they were actually MORE productive and efficient.

And so the data shows that these investments in employee experience paid dividends in terms of productivity, retention, and recruitment. Companies with superior digital work environments began to attract top talent regardless of geographic location.

Human-Machine Collaboration

66% of Leaders focused on creating seamless interactions between humans and machines (the theme of the decade, maybe?). This approach recognized that technology should augment human capabilities rather than replace them. This is a practice we stand behind as an organization, always including “human in the loop” in our AI process workflows.

Successful companies designed workflows that leveraged both human creativity and machine efficiency. The successful balance was AI handling data processing and pattern recognition, while humans focused on strategy, relationship building, and creative problem-solving.

Agile and Collaborative Structures

70% of Leaders invested aggressively in training to build agile and collaborative organization structures. An investment that these companies recognized required corresponding changes in how teams work together.

Agile methodologies enabled rapid response to changing market conditions, while collaborative tools broke down silos between departments.

The outcome is that companies that have mastered both technology and organizational agility adapt quickly to new challenges and opportunities.

Quantifiable Benefits and ROI of Technology Investment

The financial returns from strategic technology investments during the pandemic were substantial and measurable.

Revenue Growth Acceleration

Like we said above, Leaders achieved 5x faster revenue growth than Laggards, showing a significant acceleration from the 2x advantage that existed before the pandemic. This widening gap clearly shows that technology investments create compound advantages over time.

Leapfroggers achieved 4x faster revenue growth than Laggards, proving that aggressive technology adoption can quickly close competitive gaps. These companies demonstrated that multi-year digital transformations can actually be done in months, achieving rapid ROI on their technology investments.

Operational Efficiency Gains

Companies that invested in automation and AI reported significant efficiency improvements. Process automation reduced manual effort by up to 50%, while AI-powered analytics accelerated decision-making and improved accuracy.

Cloud infrastructure investments provided both cost savings and operational flexibility. Companies could scale resources based on demand, reducing waste ($$$) while ensuring adequate capacity for growth.

Market Expansion Opportunities

Technology investments enabled companies to enter new markets and serve new customer segments. Digital platforms reduced barriers to entry, while data analytics provided insights into customer needs and preferences.

67% of Leapfroggers actively sought to increase revenue from non-core business lines, using technology to explore new opportunities. This diversification strategy was able to reduce dependence on traditional revenue sources and create multiple paths to growth.

Practical Lessons for Companies Facing Economic Downturns

The success stories from the pandemic provide a roadmap for any organization facing economic uncertainty.

Invest Aggressively in Core Technologies

Economic downturns create opportunities to gain competitive advantages while competitors are cutting costs. Companies should prioritize investments in cloud infrastructure, AI, and automation technologies that deliver both immediate efficiency gains and long-term strategic value.

Focus on technologies that eliminate manual processes, improve decision-making, and enable rapid response to market changes. These investments provide measurable ROI while building capabilities for future growth.

Compress Digital Transformation Timelines

Economic pressure creates urgency that can actually accelerate digital transformation. Companies should use downturns as opportunities to make bold changes that might be difficult during normal times.

Leapfroggers compressed multi-year transformations into months by focusing on high-impact initiatives and accepting some risk. This aggressive approach enabled them to emerge from the crisis stronger than before.

Focus on Employee Experience and Collaboration

Technology investments must support human needs as well as business objectives. Companies that prioritize employee experience through digital tools and flexible work arrangements will attract and retain top talent.

Invest in collaboration platforms, communication tools, and training programs that enable effective remote and hybrid work. These investments pay dividends in productivity, retention, and recruitment.

Embrace an Innovation-First Mindset

View technology investments as growth engines rather than cost centers. Look for opportunities to enter new markets, serve new customer segments, and create new revenue streams through digital capabilities.

Encourage experimentation and rapid iteration. Economic downturns provide cover for bold moves that might seem risky during normal times.

RELATED: Reduce the Source of 70-85% of Rework by Intelligently Improving Requirements Quality

Building Resilience Through Strategic Technology Adoption

The pandemic taught us that economic disruptions are inevitable, but they don’t have to be devastating. Companies that invest strategically in technology during downturns can emerge stronger and more competitive.

The key is to view economic uncertainty not as a threat to be weathered, but as an opportunity to build advantages that competitors can’t easily replicate. Technology investments made during difficult times often deliver the highest returns because they’re made with focus and urgency.

Organizations considering technology investments during economic downturns should remember that the gap between leaders and laggards continues to widen. The companies that act decisively now will be positioned to capture disproportionate growth when conditions improve.

For teams managing complex development processes, ensuring regulatory compliance, and coordinating global collaboration, the lessons from pandemic-era success stories are particularly relevant. Strategic technology investments can streamline operations, reduce manual effort, and create scalable systems that support both current needs and future growth.

Explore Jama Connect Today

Ready to transform your organization’s approach to requirements management and compliance? Jama Connect has helped hundreds of the world’s leading companies scale and thrive during uncertainty. Discover how our platform can help you reduce documentation time, ensure regulatory compliance, and build the collaborative workflows that drive sustainable growth — even in challenging economic conditions.

Disclaimer: This blog post was written with the assistance of AI, particularly the portions summarizing Accenture Research. This blog post was edited and reviewed for accuracy by Kenzie Jonsson, Mario Maldari, and Decoteau Wilkerson.

Choosing the Best Tool for Requirements Management in the Automotive Industry (Even If Your Suppliers Use Something Else)

Requirements management plays a vital role in the product development lifecycle, impacting everyone in the automotive industry—from project managers and architects to software teams, systems engineers, and senior executives. Whether you’re overseeing the development of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) or managing the assembly of an entire vehicle platform, having a robust requirements management tool that helps support engineering governance can mean the difference between success and costly delays.

But here’s where it can get tricky. Your organization isn’t developing products in a vacuum. You’re constantly collaborating with a network of suppliers, each of whom may have their own preferred requirement management tools. The question then becomes, should you compromise your needs and processes to align with the tools your suppliers are using, or can you select the BEST tool for your needs and ensure seamless collaboration anyway?

Spoiler alert: The answer lies in selecting the right tool for your organization, regardless of what your suppliers are using. Here’s how you can make that decision with confidence.

Why Picking the Wrong Tool Could Cost You

Many automotive companies end up selecting requirements management tools solely because their suppliers use them. While this might seem like the easiest path to collaboration, it can actually result in more inefficiencies and frustrations down the road.

Key Challenges of Adopting the Wrong Tool:

• Misalignment with Your Processes: Tools that don’t support your specific workflows or business goals can disrupt productivity.
• Steep Learning Curves: Adopting a tool simply because others are using it can lead to excessive training needs. If the interface isn’t user-friendly or intuitive for your team, adoption rates may plummet.
• Limited Scalability: What works for your supplier today may not meet your complex or evolving needs tomorrow.
• Missed Opportunities: A mediocre tool can restrict innovation and time to market. When you’re stuck trying to make something work, you’re not maximizing efficiency or leveraging the full power of your processes.

The takeaway? It’s your team working day in and day out with the requirements management tool — not your suppliers. That means your organization’s specific needs should come first.

RELATED: Engineering Governance: The Engine Behind Automotive Excellence

Must-Have Features in a Requirements Management Tool

Choosing the right software isn’t just about checking boxes. It’s about finding a tool that fits seamlessly into your automotive development environment and supports collaboration across your supplier network.

Here are some must-have features to look for:

1: Advanced Traceability

Traceability is vital in the automotive industry for safety-critical systems and regulatory compliance. The right tool should allow you to trace requirements across your entire system—from initial stakeholder needs to risks and mitigations to testing and validation. A tool that allows you to span the entire V-Model with high visibility and ease of tracking gaps and potential risks is key. Dashboard views and other means to obtain a holistic view of the progress of your project are essential for senior management to maintain a pulse on the project and ensure progress is being made with minimal risk.

2: Change Management and Version Control

Selecting a tool that allows for change to be controlled and easily reacted to is essential for a requirements management software. Suspect triggers allow downstream impacts to be easily identified and remedied. Proactive strategies and features like impact analysis, allow for change to be assed prior to making changes, allowing teams to prepare for the impact before it happens.

RELATED: Suspicious Requirements: The Importance of Suspect Tracking in Requirements Management

3: Regulatory Support

Ensure you look for a tool that is well-versed in your industry and understands the intimate details of the business challenges you face. Ideally, the tool you select will have frameworks and datasets that adhere to your regulatory and safety compliance standards. Standards and regulations, including ISO 21434:2021, ISO 26262:2018, and ASPICE, are essential, and the tool you select should help facilitate your compliance with these standards.

4: Cross-Tool Interoperability

One of the biggest concerns when choosing a tool that your suppliers may or may not be using is interoperability. Look for software that supports standards like ReqIF (Requirements Interchange Format) to facilitate seamless exchange of requirements with external stakeholders across your entire ecosystem. This ensures you can collaborate effectively without sacrificing your own processes.

5: AI and Automation Capabilities

Modern requirements management tools leverage AI to speed up processes and improve quality. Automation capabilities can also eliminate repetitive tasks, freeing up your team to focus on higher-value work. Automatic test case generation, glossary definition, risk detection, IP identification are now considered key to requirements management and will be the standard moving forward.

6: Administration, Scalability, and Security (SOC2 Compliance)

Your requirements management solution should grow with your organization. Whether you’re managing one project or dozens, the tool should adapt to increased complexity and size. Performance at scale should be a key consideration. You’ll always need a tool that is easy to administer. You should not need a specialized role to perform this task. Cloud hosting options provide flexibility and lowers cost of ownership. SOC2 hosting environments along with a product that is also SOC2 certified is essential when considering today’s ever-evolving security risks.

7: Configurable Workflows, Customized Reports, and Export Templates

Every team operates differently. A versatile tool will allow you to configure workflows, reports, and export templates so it fits with how you work, rather than forcing you to change your processes.

8: Supply Chain Collaboration Features

While you shouldn’t need the exact same tool as your suppliers, features like shared requirements repositories, real-time commenting, and simplified export/import options make it easier to stay on the same page — even if you’re working on different platforms. Having a tool that allows you to invite external stakeholders into your reviews (at no cost) is a major benefit and consideration.

The Case for Putting Your Needs First

Imagine you’re working on a next-gen electric vehicle platform. While your suppliers might be focused on delivering specific components (like an ECU or software component), you’re responsible for the big picture. A tool that fails to give you high-level visibility simply because it aligns with your supplier’s processes? That’s a no-go.

When you select a tool based on your needs, you gain the following advantages:

• Streamlined Internal Processes: You can focus on efficiency and alignment within your team without constantly adapting to external tools.
• Improved Quality Management: With better traceability and error reduction mechanisms, your team is better positioned to meet high-quality standards.
• Flexibility to Work with Any Supplier: The right tool ensures you can collaborate effectively with any supplier, regardless of what they’re using.

Making Collaboration Work Across Different Tools

If your suppliers aren’t using the same tool, how do you handle the exchange of requirements? The good news is that most modern requirements management tools include features that make cross-platform collaboration easier than you might think.

Here’s How You Can Ensure Smooth Collaboration Regardless of Tools:

• Leverage ReqIF Standards: ReqIF facilitates reliable requirements exchange across your entire ecosystem. By adopting a tool with strong ReqIF support, you ensure compatibility with your suppliers, no matter what software they prefer.
• Utilize Integrations and APIs: Many requirements management platforms offer direct integrations to popular tools such as Jira, Teamcenter, LDRA, Simulink, and other best of breed tools. APIs or third-party integration tools can help bridge the gap between systems, creating a smoother flow of information.
• Define Common Terminology and Traceability Information Models: Consistent and clear data standards and traceability models reduce friction when exchanging files or tracing requirements. Establish these standards early in the collaboration process to ensure seamless communication across all stakeholders.
• Invest in Training and Consulting Services: While the right tool should be intuitive, training ensures your team gains expertise in leveraging advanced features for cross-platform requirements exchange. Look for companies that will partner with you from the start with industry expert consultants and can consult with your on your journey to success. Avoid those that outsource or charge high consulting fees after you’ve started your project, which will result in cost and delays.

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

Final Thoughts

Choosing the best requirements management tool for your automotive projects is no small task. But if you prioritize your organization’s unique needs while leveraging cross-platform compatibility features, you can have the best of both worlds.

Your requirements tool should empower your team, streamline your processes, and enhance collaboration without forcing you to compromise. Don’t settle for “good enough” just to align with supply chain tools when you can choose what’s “best for us”—and still work seamlessly with partners.

Curious about which tool could be the best fit for your needs? Start exploring modern requirements management tool like Jama Connect so you can stay ahead in this era of increasing complexity in the automotive industry.

In this blog, we recap our recent webinar, “Best Practices for Simplifying Variant Management.”

[Webinar Recap] Best Practices for Simplifying Variant Management

Effective variant management is essential for organizations navigating diverse and competitive markets, regulatory requirements, and evolving customer needs. By adopting best practices, teams can efficiently tailor requirements while maintaining alignment and traceability across complex product lines.

Jama Connect^® offers flexible strategies to simplify the creation, adaptation, and tracking of multiple variants. These approaches facilitate efficient reuse, reduce complexity, and maintain traceability across complicated product lines.

In this insightful session, requirements management expert Matt Mickle, Director of Solutions & Consulting at Jama Software, will lead attendees through common variant management use cases and proven strategies.

Key takeaways include:

• Identify and adapt variants to meet shifting market, regulatory, and customer demands.
• Streamline variant creation through smart reuse and cross-team alignment.
• Use structured feature models to manage options and complexity.
• Ensure compliance while evolving product variants.
• Optimize product line strategy with better visibility into variation.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Matt Mickle: Welcome, everyone. We have a fun topic today, walking through variant management use cases with the goal of simplifying this sometimes complicated topic. I will start off by walking through some of the common use cases that we often hear, followed by some concrete examples of how we would see these within the industry. I’ll talk a little bit about how we’ll solve these within Jama Connect and then have some demonstration of this directly in the tool. I’ll do this for each use case as we proceed, and then we’ll move on to some Q&A and I’ll answer some of your questions.

So, what do I mean when I say variant management? Well, simply, I would describe variant management as any process or technique that is used to manage variability and assets within a project. This could be in the form of certain techniques, such as feature-based product line engineering, which we’ll talk a little bit more about later. Configuration management, product derivation or branch and merge. A product can vary in many ways, such as different features, material or components, premium services or levels of performance. Here are some examples you might recognize. Models of home appliances with different sizes or capabilities, like these refrigerators. Microcontrollers with a configuration of reusable IP blocks. Medical devices, such as insulin pumps or digital thermometers having an array of features based on setting, method of application or type of consumer. As well as everyday devices, such as smartphones or smartwatches with different uses or consumer profiles.

Nearly every product you could think of has some amount of variation. And the process of managing those variants extends from the conception of the products, all the way into their description at the point of sale, and maintenance thereafter. So, one of these methods, which we will mention in the discussion today, is product line engineering or PLE for short. And for this, we’ll use the simple definition, a focus on engineering for a family of products with similar features, components or modules as a single product line to leverage commonality and variability, minimize the duplication of effort and maximize reusability.

Now, a couple of definitions that go along with that from the standards for product line engineering, from ISO 26550, the definition of a feature would be an abstract functional characteristic of a system of interest that end users and other stakeholders can understand. And from the product line engineering for feature-based product line engineering standard, ISO 26580, a product line would be a family of similar products with variations in features. So, product line engineering could be considered as the next step in maturity. Single system engineering. And as the ISO standard on software and system engineering for product line engineering and management states, product companies utilizing single system engineering and management approaches may end up with highly complex and low quality products. Low productivity, high employee turnover, and less than expected customer satisfaction.

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

Mickle: So, let’s instead talk about the benefits of moving from single system engineering into product line engineering. Product line engineering enables organizations to create product line architecture that allows for the systematic reuse of components, modules, and assets across different products within a product line. This promotes efficiency by reducing redundancy in the need to recreate similar functionalities for each product. By reusing existing components and assets, organizations can significantly reduce development costs. Product line engineering allows for economies of scale, as the investment in creating a core set of assets can be spread across multiple products, leading to cost savings in the long run.

With product line engineering, organizations can streamline the development process by leveraging existing components and architectures. Faster time to market for new products, since development efforts are focused on creating unique features, rather than rebuilding common functionalities. Product line engineering helps ensure consistency in products across the product line. By reusing well-tested and validated components, the likelihood of introducing defects or inconsistencies is reduced. And this will lead to higher overall product quality. As market demands change or new technologies emerge, product line engineering provides a framework that allows organizations to adapt and evolve their product line more easily. This enables the addition of new features or modification of existing ones without starting the development from scratch.

Product line engineering supports efficient configuration management, allowing organizations to define and manage variations and products through configuration, rather than by creating separated versions or desynchronized copies of content. This simplifies the task of handling different customer requirements or market-specific adaptations. Product line engineering makes maintenance and upgrades more manageable. Changes or bug fixes can be applied to common components, and then the updates can be propagated to all of the products within the line, ensuring that each product benefits from the improvements without having to undergo individual modifications.

And finally, product line engineering helps mitigate the risks associated with product development by relying on well-established and proven components. Since these components have been used and tested across multiple products, the likelihood of critical issues arising is reduced. Now, of course, there are many benefits for product line engineering, but there are a lot of challenges that a company goes through in order to try and move towards product line engineering. For example, let’s say a company starts out with a single product and then begins to build variants on that product, turning it into a product line. As the number of variants and variation between them grows, the ability to manage them becomes more and more challenging.

When a change is made, it’s important to assess not only the impact of that change within the product, where the change is made, but also in any products that are part of the same product line. If the change is against common requirements, then the decision is needed on whether they need variation. New versions or configurations of components of a system will need to be thoroughly reviewed with regards to how they interconnect. This becomes even more challenging and complex when considered as the product development data moves from one development application to the next. Throughout the supply chain, information about progress and change needs to flow and be collected in order to see overall status.

It’s very difficult to collect and understand this with only a single complex product and increases exponentially with variation. Now, within the context of the content included in Jama, the task of managing variants begins once there is any notion of more than one product being developed which has common requirements to another product. The question then arises of how to maximize reusability, and still understand the impact across multiple variants in the most efficient and effective way. Let’s go over a few ways that this presents itself and what the desired outcomes are. The first case is related to high-level requirements. And in this case, I’ll call it, the use case custom requirements.

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

Mickle: Those high-level requirements need to change for a given project. These input requirements could be things like specific market support for different markets that your product is in. It could also be different regulations for different regions, where your product is located and they have to go by different standards. Could also be that your customers are requesting your core product, but they want some customization to that core product. It could also be that you have different consumer profiles that you’re trying to match that product with, or it could be just an evolution from a previous year’s model that’s still in production.

In these circumstances, we may want to just be able to understand what the high-level requirements have as an impact on derived requirements design and test. So, we may need to filter out and keep track of what content stems from these input requirements. And we may need to test and produce documentation specifically related to that filter content. So, let’s imagine that our product team has been working through the lifecycle of creating an initial version of a product, and has developed many of the requirements and design, as well as written the tests against those requirements.

Now they have just received word that there is a new customer that has invested the product and would like the same product the team is already developing, but with some customizations and their own custom branding. This customer would like to also introduce the product into a new market which has a different power and connectivity standard. Technically, the scope of the change is going to total about 10% of the overall content, but the needs need to be tested independently and the documentation needs to be specific to each variant. So, you could copy the content and make the changes in each product independently, but perhaps you would still prefer to just indicate the differences and otherwise make use of the content that currently exists.

Also, you might still be able to make use of much of the testing that is in place for anything that is not interfaced with the components that have changes. For this reason, our strategy would be to keep those products together in a single super-set project, and use a mechanism within Jama called categories to indicate the variation. As you can see from the diagram here, we have the category tree which references a product line with different variants. Those variants would then be applied to the top-level requirements within your project, and then derived appropriately throughout the traceability within that project to ensure that everything has a category for the variant in which it lives.

For those items that are common to multiple variants, those would also contain the category for each variant in which they apply. Let’s go ahead and take a look at how that looks within Jama. So, for this example, I’m going to use a project which we call 48 volt power assist here. And this is our product. And basically, within here we’re going to look at the different variants that this 48 volt power assist has. So, first of all, I can go over to this categories tab, and I can click on that and see the different variants associated with the different categories. These have been added within the organization admin section.

And within each of those categories, you’ll see that I have requirements associated with the category. I just have to see those by clicking on the category itself and then I’ll see throughout the tree what categories apply to which requirements, or vice versa, which requirements apply to those categories in this case. I can also create a filter based on anything that applies to that category. So, here I’ve got those same items, but now I’ve got the structure associated with it when I look at the reading view associated with this. That gives me the ability to, of course, do things like export it as a document and include those different heading structures.

WATCH THE ENTIRE WEBINAR HERE:
Eliminate Gaps and Risks with Proven Traceability Best Practices

Structured Collaboration in Semiconductor Development

Any semiconductor product development team has experienced the challenge of managing data from different components of a highly complex system of systems. In today’s hypercompetitive market, requirements management is a high-stakes effort navigating tight operational margins with little room for data integrity errors. Because different components of a semiconductor product may evolve along different timelines, building a coherent product from multiple data streams requires new methodologies and practices to continuously deliver these products to the market quickly and with high quality – no easy feat!

Many of these organizations struggle to keep pace with the rapidly changing product development environment, especially when their teams work in silos using either business applications (Word, Excel) or legacy requirements management systems to house their definitional data. As businesses continue to shift focus to faster time-to-market and customer-driven product development, deeper structured collaboration amongst teams is not only desired but necessary.

What is Structured Collaboration

Structured collaboration is centered around the idea that people can work and interact with one another, moving toward specific and measurable goals. This approach works in two parts, utilizing technology and process frameworks to define new and innovative ideas that drive business outcomes.

By combining asynchronous but interdependent collaboration with elements of content management (content about your product or system), development process management, and task management — all integrated into a workflow process that coordinates multiple activities from several teams — cross-functional teams can produce the results that drive the business forward.

The absence of structured data and practices early in the Product Lifecycle can lead to wasted time, untraceable changes, lost context for decisions that were made, and missed opportunities for innovation.

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

Innovation Depends on Structured Collaboration

Bringing together innovators across cultures, organizations, and geographic regions to accomplish goals can revolutionize a sector. It also presents unique challenges with each group having their own standards and entrenched way of tackling the task at hand. So, how do these teams tackle complicated divides without their differences becoming impediments?

• Unify Goals: When cross-functional teams have a shared purpose and unified goals for developing a product, innovation, or service, they can better overcome challenges inherent to collaborating in a complex environment.
• Clarify Roles: Clearly communicating expectations for how and when each team member will be asked to participate helps alleviate the uncertainty that comes with collaborating in a new way. Documenting areas of accountability and tracking collaboration each step of the way keeps programs moving forward smoothly.
• Encourage Expression of Unique Points of View: Unlocking the creativity needed for innovation requires harnessing insights and unique perspectives across different stakeholders. Encouraging team members to speak up and share alternative perspectives results in robust and better-considered ideas for implementation. Having representation from across the team will also help better assess the impacts of decisions made and identify issues before they become problems.
• Use the Right Tools: We’re fortunate these days to have a wealth of collaboration tools from Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams to Zoom and Google Meet. As teams seek real-time input and feedback critical to capturing insights, these tools serve a vital purpose. These only scratch the surface in eliciting the type of collaboration necessary for modern systems engineering, though.

Enable Cross-Team Alignment with Live Traceability™

While meetings, emails and instant messaging channels serve a purpose, they are insufficient for making and tracking key decisions that impact an entire silicon program. Modern systems engineering must include means for live data to be shared and accessed by teams anywhere in the world at any point in time.

As members of the product team seek to communicate requirements and project status across departments, roles, and geographic boundaries, the golden age of sharing documents and spreadsheets will no longer serve its purpose. Without a digital thread that connects people and processes — from definition to delivery — development teams face increased risk, challenges meeting compliance, and delays that can impact time-to-market and product and systems stability.

Live Traceability™ in Jama Connect^® provides a single-source of truth, cross-team collaboration, and end-to-end visibility which forms the digital thread through siloed complex product, systems, and software development.

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

Eliminate Collaboration Silos to Enable Strategic Partnerships

Today’s semiconductor ecosystem requires companies to consider strategic partnerships as they sell into varied dynamic and often integrated markets such as robotic factory automation, autonomous driving, and AI-enhanced medical diagnostic equipment. With these new partnerships and integration comes greater sharing of data across distributed teams, business units, and with partner companies. Teams that operate in silos with legacy systems will not be equipped to meet demands set by the market.

For engineers accustomed to working in internal, siloed groups, these new partnerships present previously unforeseen challenges. Structured and strategic team collaboration and careful data governance and security are critical to improving the product development process for all participants – and this includes everyone across the supply chain.

People working together is at the very core of all product development. For companies to turn the research of today into the products of tomorrow, it is critical that their teams stay connected, synchronized and unified. By aligning business objectives with a system in place that allows for structured reviews and collaboration, teams can elicit feedback, review product features with stakeholders in real-time and track critical decisions across teams and locations. Simply put, it gives companies that ideate, design, develop and deliver highly complex semiconductor products a critical edge in an industry where the speed, precision, and quality of process enable the speed, precision, and quality of products.

Jama Connect provides a robust yet flexible framework to enable accelerated design and development. Contact us to learn more about reducing collaboration friction through shared data across your semiconductor system of systems.

Mastering Configuration and Customization in Jama Connect^®

Jama Connect^® is a powerful platform designed to streamline requirements management and foster process standardization across organizations. Its flexibility allows teams to tailor the system to their unique workflows while maintaining consistency. This article delves into effective strategies for configuring and customizing Jama Connect to align with your organization’s processes.

Embrace Process Standardization

While Jama Connect offers extensive configurability, it’s essential to prioritize process standardization. Aligning team-specific needs with a unified process ensures consistency and efficiency. Before implementing custom configurations, evaluate whether existing setups or minor adjustments can meet your requirements. This approach minimizes complexity and promotes a cohesive workflow.

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

Implement a Configuration Change Control Process

As your team interacts with Jama Connect, new configuration needs may emerge. Establishing a Configuration Change Control process helps manage these requests systematically. Form a configuration change board responsible for reviewing and approving configuration changes. This board assesses requests to determine if they can be addressed through process alignment, existing configurations, or user training. Such governance ensures that changes are deliberate and beneficial.

Customize Item Types Thoughtfully

Item types in Jama Connect define various artifacts like requirements, test cases, and risks. While creating custom item types can cater to specific needs, it’s advisable to limit their proliferation. A streamlined set of item types simplifies management and enhances reporting consistency across projects. Before adding new item types, consider adapting existing ones to serve multiple teams, ensuring they are not over-configured with unnecessary fields. Remember, changes to item types affect all projects, as they cannot be customized individually.

SOURCE: Jama Software Help: Adding and Editing Item Times

Personalize the Explorer Tree

The Explorer Tree is central to navigating projects within Jama Connect. Users can tailor this feature to display information most pertinent to their roles:

1. Access Explorer Settings: Click the gear icon at the top of the Explorer Tree.
2. Adjust Preferences: In the settings window, choose options such as displaying item IDs, showing only folders, or enabling outline numbering.
3. Apply Changes: Save your settings to customize your view.

These adjustments enhance usability and focus, allowing users to concentrate on relevant project components.

SOURCE: Jama Software Help: Setting Up Your Work Environment

GET STARTED: The Essential Guide to Requirements Management and Traceability

Configure Views for Consistency

Standardizing how information is presented aids in clarity and collaboration. Organization administrators can set default fields for various views:

• Projects List View
• Projects Reading View
• Reviews Single Item View
• Reviews Reading View

To configure these views:

1. Navigate to Admin Panel: Select Admin > Organization > Item Types > Views.
2. Select and Edit View: Choose the view to configure and specify the default fields.
3. Save Settings: Apply changes to establish consistent views across the organization.

Consistent views ensure all users access and interpret information uniformly, reducing misunderstandings and errors.

SOURCE: Jama Software Help: Configuring Views

Customizing Your Workflow in Jama Connect

Jama Connect allows you to fully customize your workflow process to align with your unique organizational needs. Whether your workflow follows a simple pattern, such as “Draft → Reviewed → Approved,” or a more complex series of states, you have the flexibility to define and manage it directly within Jama Connect. This customization ensures alignment with your team’s processes, facilitating smoother transitions between stages and maintaining clear visibility into the current status of your work items. By tailoring workflows, teams can improve efficiency, maintain compliance, and ensure that the right steps are followed throughout the project lifecycle.

WHAT SHAPE IS YOUR DATA IN: Free Data Model Diagnostic™

Customizing Review Center

The Review Center within Jama Connect also supports significant levels of configuration and customization, empowering teams to manage reviews effectively. For example, you can enable features like voting mechanisms to gather stakeholders’ input, implement electronic signatures for requirements to ensure traceability and compliance, or lock items automatically once they reach a specific state in the review process. These configurable options provide enhanced control over collaboration, allowing teams to tailor the review process to meet business goals while fostering accountability and transparency among all participants.

Enhance Test Execution with Custom Fields

During test execution, capturing specific data can be crucial. Adding custom fields to the Test Run item type allows testers to input additional information:

1. Access Test Run Configuration: Go to Admin > Item Types > Test Runs.
2. Add Custom Field: Click ‘Add field,’ complete the form, and save.
3. Utilize in Test Runs: The new fields will appear during test execution for data entry.

This customization enables teams to collect all necessary information during testing, enhancing the quality and traceability of test results.

SOURCE: Jama Software Help: Configuring Customized Fields

Regularly Review and Update Configurations

As projects evolve, so do processes and requirements. Regularly revisiting Jama Connect configurations ensures they remain aligned with current needs. Schedule periodic reviews to assess the effectiveness of existing setups and make necessary adjustments. This proactive approach keeps the platform responsive and relevant.

In conclusion, effectively configuring and customizing Jama Connect involves a balance between flexibility and standardization. By thoughtfully implementing changes, governing configurations, and maintaining regular reviews, organizations can harness the full potential of Jama Connect to support their unique workflows while ensuring consistency and efficiency.

Editors Note: This blog post was written using our Jama Software Help resources and leveraging AI assistance for organization and streamlining purposes. This article is not meant to be comprehensive. For help configuring or customizing your Jama Connect instance, please reach out to your customer success manager. If you are not yet a Jama Software client, but interesting in speaking more about Jama Connect, please visit this page: https://www.jamasoftware.com/platform/jama-connect/trial/