When Even Crisp Requirements Crumble

Jama Software's latest Jama Product Delivery Platform arrives this week with a promise of project visibility for developers and other business decision-makers within product development teams.

The software comprises enterprise social tools that sit on top of the company's collaborative requirements-management solution.

Jama CEO Eric Winquist argues that the requirements process leads to ideas being "tossed over the wall to development" and that even with the latest technology and Agile processes, there are disconnects and frustrations.

"Programmers, engineers, and testers are working from the information they have. Regardless of how crisp the requirements are at the project outset, they will continue to change. Without visibility into the business impact of changes and updates, the development team is at enormous disadvantage," says Winquist. “Jama wanted to give the development team an easy, and effective way, to pull in business stakeholders when necessary to keep projects on track."

Jama's proposition is to be able to engage stakeholders where they already work, so the software brings in people across the business with workflows familiar to them.

By using common social constructs, including @mentions, #hashtags, and a collaboration stream, Jama says that the product team can elevate critical and time-sensitive decisions to the right people and let them respond in real time from wherever they are via email, direct from a mobile device or the collaboration stream.

"One of the major problems with quality is not getting feedback during early design activities when changes are easy and inexpensive to implement. Jama, which first introduced collaborative requirements management, applies the same principles to ad-hoc discussions enabling frequent, informal collaboration, and review across the product delivery cycle. This enables team members to pull in their peers to discuss and make decisions about requirements, test cases, and other details before they are formally reviewed," said the company.

By having real-time conversations about projects in the same place where the work takes place, Jama claims that users can associate development changes and issues with potential business impact.