PORTLAND, Ore., 5 Jan. 2017. Software designers at embedded computing expert Mercury Systems in Chelmsford, Mass., needed an updated software engineering tool for tracking system requirements. They found their solution from Jama Software in Portland, Ore.
Mercury Systems, which designs and manufactures high-performance digital signal and image processing systems for defense and commercial applications, chose the Jama 8.10 software-development tool to replace the IBM Rational DOORS project that Mercury had been using.
Mercury experts found the IBM Rational DOORS software tool to be costly to manage and did not deliver necessary reporting capabilities, particularly as the company prepares to comply with AS9100, a new aerospace quality standard that requires complete traceability of product requirements, Jama officials say.
Mercury explored several options to upgrade its product development process and ultimately chose the Jama solution because of its reporting capabilities, its ease of use, and its clean Web-based interface, Jama officials say.
A typical Mercury product involves 1,200 to 1,500 requirements, and Mercury manages all of them in Jama. As many as 300 engineers use the Jama Review Center regularly to share product requirements, iterate on specifications and confirm mutually agreed-upon requirements.
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“You can attach comments to reviews and this makes for a quick, dynamic review cycle,” says Joe Plunkett, Mercury’s director of systems engineering. “We can collect feedback earlier, and this allows more people to add value."
Jama has made Mercury’s development process more efficient, and engineers no longer sit in marathon sessions going over documents line by line, then frantically merging changes, Jama officials say. Now they can easily manage all revisions, even if the project scope is modified daily.
“We’re working with a defense contractor on a multi billion-dollar project,” Plunkett says. “They needed to generate reports and show traceability, so I sat down with the client and showed him how easy it is with Jama. He was stunned that something that took him hours to do could be accomplished in a few seconds with Jama."
For more information contact Jama Software online at www.jamasoftware.com, or Mercury Systems at www.mrcy.com.
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