Traceable MBSE™ in Action: Integrating Sparx Enterprise Architect with Jama Connect®

In the complex systems engineering landscape, maintaining Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) across requirements and architecture is a major challenge. Engineers must ensure that high-level requirements flow seamlessly into architectural elements while managing changes across multiple tools.

With the integration between Sparx Enterprise Architect and Jama Connect^®, teams can achieve Traceable MBSE™ with bidirectional synchronization of requirements, architecture elements, and diagrams. This enables a holistic view of system design, ensuring real-time traceability, impact analysis, and compliance with predefined processes.

In this blog, Atef Ghribi, Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software, demonstrates the Sparx Enterprise Architecture integration with Jama Connect.

TRANSCRIPT

Atef Ghribi: Hello. My name is Atef Ghribi, and I’m a Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software. Today, we will be walking through the Sparx Enterprise Architect integration. But before looking at the tools in action, let’s explore the goal we are trying to achieve as well as the following approach.

Some of the major questions that systems engineers are faced with are related to traceability and how to ensure its completeness based on predefined processes, methodologies, and rules. Making sure that there are no gaps in the process and that all the needs and high-level requirements are covered and satisfied by the lower-level requirements as well as architectural elements, and figuring out how to overcome the challenges of managing changes across the traceability chain, which in most of the cases spans over and across multiple tools. Applying that to the architecture context results in questions like, how do architecture changes impact requirements and vice versa?

As MBSE leaders and advocates, the question is how to make sure that MBSE is accessible and usable easily and efficiently to non-modelers without the need to take care of all the logistics and know what the architecture tools require. With integrations to architecture tools, including Enterprise Architect, Jama Connect enables its users to leverage traceable MBSE to work and interact with the architecture providing a holistic overview of the whole systems engineering process.

Traceable MBSE is a technical approach for the creation, consumption, and measurement of systems engineering data with Jama Connect frameworks for achieving Live Traceability™.  The way it works is by enabling bidirectional synchronization of requirements and architecture elements between Jama Connect and Enterprise Architect, as well as syncing diagrams and traceability from Enterprise Architect to Jama Connect as the central engineering management repository.

Jama Connect uses the data to enable intelligent engineering management, providing the ability to detect process risks and identify gaps, measure progress and coverage, and analyze the impact of changes. What we will see in the integration is a simple flow between requirements and architecture elements, starting by creating requirements within Jama Connect and transitioning to Enterprise Architect to start using those requirements in the architecture, where we will be creating architectural elements like blocks, allocating the new requirements to them by creating dependency traces. And that’s all we will need to do as users. The integration will then take care of syncing those changes from the architecture back to our central engineering data repository, Jama Connect. Let’s see this in action.

RELATED: Traceable MBSE™ in Jama Connect: Quickstart Guide

Ghribi: What we see right now in front of us is the Jama Connect project that we are using for the integration, governed by this process or the so-called relationship rule diagram, where we can see the relationship rules that are defined and expected for this project. This will be the instrument that helps us measure the progress and coverage and identify the gaps later. What is interesting for us in the context of this integration are the two item types, system requirements, and architectural elements, as well as the relationship between them that enables users to allocate system requirements to architectural elements.

If we look at the left-hand side of the screen, we can see our project tree, which is the place where we store the content of our project. And we can there also find the system requirements that are managed within this project. So here as a system requirements engineer, I’m gonna be able to create a new system requirement that will be synchronized based on the integration to our Enterprise Architect. So keeping things simple, I’m gonna call this new system requirements.
We can select a type, and we can give it some text as a description. Let’s say description text. And we can save this one to our Jama Connect database.

The integration works now in the background to ensure a real-time synchronization of these changes into our respective EA project. If we also look at another location inside of our project, we can see the place where we defined the integration to sync our architectural elements. Both the diagrams as well as the architectural elements will be synchronized here. We will get back to this later to see how we change or how the changes that we’re gonna do in Enterprise Architect will be updated here.

Let’s switch now to Enterprise Architect and explore the project structure and see if we can find that new system requirement that we just created in Jama Connect. We are keeping the structure of this project simple. And for the sake of simplicity also, as you can see inside of the folder of requirements, we just have a plain list of our system requirements without any folders or any informational elements.

And as we can see, we can find the new system requirement that we just created listed here. So as an architect, I can now use that new input and go to my architecture and create a new architectural element. Save and close. That should create our new item in the Explorer for the project. Now we can start using that new element in our diagram, and you will be able to just place it inside of the diagram and link it. We can do the same for our requirement to create the traceability and allocate that requirement that we just got into the new architectural elements.

And just by creating the relationship as a dependency, we can make sure that now we have the traceability from our system requirements into our architectural element. We can now save the changes in this diagram. As an additional step, I will go to our requirements and start making some changes just to synchronize back and see how the description will change if we just add some changes from EA. Saving. And now we can go back to Jama Connect and explore the changes there.

RELATED: Intelligent Engineering Management with Jama Connect Live Trace Explorer™

Ghribi: Now as we go back to Jama Connect, we can explore our architecture again and see if we can see that new system architectural element. Just need to refresh first our trajectory. And now we can see that new element that was just created inside of our Jama Connect database. Now I can also take a look at the diagrams and see that internal block diagram that just got updated by the integration. In addition to these updates inside of my Jama, I can see also the changes that were applied to my requirement. I can start seeing the changes, that were just, synchronized. I can also start comparing, and understanding what exact changes were now made and modified between the different versions of my requirement.

In addition to that, the traceability that we just created inside of Enterprise Architect can also be seen here. If I go and open the live trace view inside of Jama Connect and scroll up to see how my architectural elements are synchronized and traced to system requirements, I can see the relationship between the new system requirements and the architectural element that was created inside of Enterprise Architect, also inside of charmer.

What we can also see in this view are all the gaps related to all the architectural elements that do not have any system requirements allocation. We can see the same information from the system requirements perspective, this time covering more system requirements. So if we just narrow down our trace view to our system requirements on the left-hand side of the screen and to our architectural elements on the right-hand side of the screen, we can start also seeing all those other system requirements that do not have any coverage or allocation into architectural elements based on the predefined process assigned to this project. We can see the same information also in our dashboard.

So if we use filters and widgets, we can simply see that information in real time and be able to capture any gaps in the process before it’s too late. Now Jama Connect helps us also to get a holistic overview of our project just by using the Live Trace Explorer™ I can just expand here on my project and open a full coverage view that compares the project or the state of my project to the process assigned to it and defines and shows a trace score in real time where I can focus on the exact KPIs and metrics that are relevant for me. For our case today, the architectural elements cover our system requirements where we can trust the progress and see the covered percentage in real time.

As soon as anything changes within Jama Connect or in Enterprise Architect, these values will be updated in real-time, and we can keep track of the progress. Thank you for watching this session on the Enterprise Architect integration for Jama Connect. If you are an existing customer and want to learn more, please reach out to your customer success manager or consultant.

If you would like to learn more about how Jama 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 release management via reuse and synchronization, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Jama Software Consultant.

To view more Jama Connect integration demos, visit our
Jama Connect Features in Five Integration Series

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Git Repository Integration

Learn how you can supercharge your systems development process! In this blog series, we’re pulling back the curtains to give you a look at a few of the powerful features in Jama Connect^®… in about five minutes.

In this Features in Five Integration Series video, Atef Ghribi, Senior Solutions Architect at Jama Software^® – demonstrates a Git repository integration with Jama Connect^® using a repository in GitLab.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Atef Ghribi: Hello and welcome to the Features in Five Integration series. My name is Atef Ghribi and I am a senior solution architect at Jama Software. Today, we’ll be looking at the Git repositories integration using an example of a repository in GitLab. We make it possible for you to integrate Jama Connect with the preferred best-of-breed software to achieve Live Traceability™ across the end-to-end development cycle. Live requirements traceability is the ability for any engineer at any time to see the most up-to-date and complete upstream and downstream information for any requirement, no matter the stage of systems development or how many siloed tools and teams it spans.

This enables significant productivity and quality improvements, dramatically reduces the risk of product delays, cost overruns, defects, rework, and recalls, and ultimately results in faster time to market. Jama Connect being the central space repository for holistic overview across the traceability chain will be able to store the source code change track published by the integration hub from the source code repository management tools such as GitHub or GitLab. This allows software developers to work in their environments without adding additional steps to ensure traceability.

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

Ghribi: The integration hub will take care of publishing the source code, and commit information to Jama Connect as soon as they are available in the Git repository. Additionally, software developers can provide traceability information in their source code commits, which will allow Jama Connect to create the trace links to other items, making sure that source code change sets are embedded into the traceability chain. By providing this seamless integration, Jama Connect will ensure better accessibility beyond tool boundaries to source code traceability for stakeholders who are not necessarily familiar with Git repositories.

This holistic traceability enables better efficiency in conducting impact analysis and controlling the change management process as well as facilitating reporting and tracking of metrics across tools to assess and achieve compliance with less effort. Here is a simple flow between GitLab and Jama Connect. I will start by adding a simple implementation task to my Jama Connect project. This is the input for the software developer to start working on the implementation. Now this is just an example. We can here use any other item type based on the process defined and configured within Jama Connect.

Going to my implementation issues set and here I will start by creating a new task and then I will just save and close and this will create a new implementation task inside of my Jama Connect project. I will take the ID provided by Jama Connect as information that I will use later for the traceability. Now in GitLab I will make some changes to my source code and will make sure to mention the implementation task ID and my source code commit. I’m of course just using the UI of GitLab here to edit the file, but this would be the same process if I’m working on a different environment development machine and submitting the changes sets from my own local repository.

We are just keeping things simple for the time being. So going into my file and then I’m going to edit the file as a single file just here adding some changes and I will make sure to mention in the commit message the message for the change. And then I will just put the ID as I got it from Jama Connect and now I will just commit the changes and we will see what will happen inside of Jama Connect. The integration will take care of the rest and we will go back to Jama and see how the source code change commit was published and how the traceability will be defined inside of Jama Connect.

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

Ghribi: Within a few seconds based on the integration configured, we can refresh our project inside of Jama Connect and see how the source code change set will be published to the spot in the project tree that we defined in the integration hub. We will just refresh and now we will see that we now have one item representing our change commit with the name that was provided. So if we look closer here, we’ll be able to see that we have that same message. If we look at the traceability on the right-hand side of the screen and our relationship switch it, we will be able to see that there is one upstream link to the task implementation task that we used in the comment.

So as software developers we don’t need to redundantly create any items inside of Jama Connect or create any links after we submit our traceability. If I go also to the task that is inside of Jama Connect and look at the traceability chain, and refresh, we’ll be able to see here that source code traceability that is managed. So we have bidirectional traceability already inside of Jama Connect, which will now allow us to have and embed our code or change sets traceability source code to the traceability chain of our project.

Thank you for watching this Feature in Five session on the Git repositories integration for Jama Connect. If you are an existing customer and want to learn more, please reach out to your customer success manager or consultant. If you are not yet a client, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com to learn more about the platform and how we can help optimize your development processes.

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

ISO 24089, developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), is a standard that provides guidelines for managing software updates in a methodical and orderly way. Planning, testing, deployment, and monitoring are all included in the framework for managing the software update process that is specified by the standard. The main requirements and advantages of ISO 24089 as it relates to software update management systems will be highlighted in this post.

Software is a crucial building block of the modern connected and automated vehicles. Once the product is sold to the customer it starts its utilization phase. Important software updates are needed to keep the vehicle up to date, roll out new features, eliminate defects or bugs and most importantly redress security vulnerabilities. These software updates are in most cases delivered remotely through over-the-air technologies. There is no need to necessarily take the car to a workshop in order to install these updates. These over the air technologies make the whole process vulnerable and a proper framework needs to be set up to organize this process and make sure that the right updates are delivered to the right vehicles. Therefore, companies producing cars must have a software update management system. An organization may run the risk of security flaws, software bugs, and compatibility problems if software upgrades are not managed properly. The UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) has put a new regulation R156 in place to regulate the Software update and software update management system which by this regulation become mandatory for the type of approval process in the regulated markets. The goal of ISO 24089 is to provide a thorough method for managing software updates that reduces risks and guarantees that updates are implemented in a consistent and efficient manner to support compliance with the UNECE R156.

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

The framework of ISO 24089 revolves around a list of conditions that must be fulfilled in order to comply with the standard. These prerequisites consist of:

1. Policy Planning: Establishing a policy for software updates and creating a plan for handling updates are requirements for the organization. The goals and parameters of the software update management system should be specified in the policy, along with the roles and duties of the various participants.
2. Risk Management: The company must evaluate the risks posed by software updates and put precautions in place to reduce those risks. This entails locating potential security gaps and making sure upgrades don’t interfere with business as usual.
3. Testing and Validation: Before updates are deployed, the organization needs to set up a process for testing and validating them. This procedure should make sure that updates are compatible with the current software environment and do not add any new errors or compatibility problems.
4. Deployment: A procedure for deploying updates to production environments must be established by the company. This procedure should guarantee that updates are distributed in a regulated and safe manner, reducing the possibility of operations disruption for the company.
5. Monitoring: Establishing a process for monitoring and evaluating the software update management system’s performance is necessary for the company. Regular audits and evaluations of the system’s effectiveness and the identification of potential improvement areas should be part of this process.

RELATED: [Webinar Recap] Why it Makes Sense to Store Cybersecurity Risk Management Items Inside a Requirements Management System

Businesses can make sure that their software update management system is well-designed, efficient, and compliant with ISO 24089 by following these requirements. The standard offers businesses a framework for creating a dependable and consistent procedure for managing software updates, lowering the risks involved with updates, and making sure upgrades are applied quickly and effectively.

One of ISO 24089’s major advantages is that it aids businesses in raising the caliber of their software updates. Organizations can guarantee that updates are adequately tested and verified before deployment by putting in place a structured procedure for testing and validation, which lowers the chance of errors and compatibility problems. As a result, the organization’s overall operational environment becomes more solid and reliable.

The ability to lower the risk of security vulnerabilities brought on by software upgrades is another advantage of ISO 24089. Organizations can lessen the risk of cyberattacks and other security breaches by putting in place a risk management plan that involves the identification and mitigation of potential security threats.

Additionally, ISO 24089 supports businesses in enhancing their adherence to legal specifications for software updates. Numerous regulatory frameworks mandate that businesses have a formal, written process in place for handling software changes. Organizations can demonstrate compliance with these criteria and lower their risk of regulatory fines and other consequences by adhering to ISO 24089.

ISO 24089 assists enterprises in lowering the risks related to updates, enhancing the quality of their software environments, and meeting regulatory obligations by providing a thorough framework for managing updates. A more effective, dependable, and secure software update management system can help organizations that use ISO 24089 improve their overall operational performance and lower risk.

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