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Preparing for a Successful Rollout of Jama Connect®

Zeb
Zeb
  • Updated

Author: Zeb Geary

Updated: October 2024

Audience: Everyone

Products Applicable: Jama Connect®, Jama Connect Interchange™, and Jama Connect Advisor™

Use Case

Preparing for a Successful Rollout of Jama Connect®

Best Practice

Welcome to Jama Software®, and congratulations on your investment in modern requirements management! You're not alone in this journey. We support you as you focus on getting your teams up and running and using Jama Connect to its full potential. Jama Software onboarding experts have developed key activities to start thinking through while you kick off your deployment. While all are worth considering, the level of depth necessary will depend on the size of your deployment.

Implementation

Outcomes

Identify and document the critical business outcomes you plan to achieve using the Jama Connect®. Include key challenges and known opportunities for improvement. Ensure outcomes and challenges are concrete, measurable, and meaningful. Consider documenting and gaining agreement on the following:

      • Current Challenges and the Negative Consequences of Those Challenges

      • Future State (Goals) and the Positive Business Outcomes when those goals are achieved

      • Key Capabilities that are required to unlock those Positive Business Outcomes

      • Metrics that would indicate achievement or progress toward your Goals

People, Process, Data

Remember that Jama Connect is a solution that supports, enables, and streamlines your process, but there must be a process! Consider the current process (even if loosely defined) and the desired future process that Jama Connect will enable. Please document near-term changes and identify all the people and teams who will engage with Jama Connect throughout the process. Consider the expanded stakeholders, including customers and teams charged with business strategy, planning, development, testing, and go-to-market activities.

 

Decision-Making

Identify and capture who should be involved in informing and making decisions about the approach and design for using Jama Connect.

Decisions, which carry significant weight, include things like:

      • How do you change how your teams communicate digitally— is it via formal review and approval? Or informal feedback?
      • How will you change existing processes to incorporate new capabilities offered by Jama Connect?
      • How will you come up with naming standards?
      • What data should or shouldn’t be synced with integrated systems?
      • How do we organize and structure information in Jama Connect?

Consider the following roles (note that some people may take on multiple roles):

Roles Responsibilities
Implementation Lead The Implementation Project Lead is responsible for managing the overall deployment of Jama Connect within the organization. This individual should be able to understand your internal processes and be a strong supporter of incorporating Jama Connect into these processes. Responsibilities include coordinating resources, scheduling and presiding over meetings, communicating and facilitating decisions, and informing Jama Software of issues or concerns. The Implementation Lead should have the authority to make project-level decisions.
Sponsor The Business/Executive Sponsor is accountable for the success of Jama Connect within the organization and has the authority to implement recommended process changes that may arise during this project. The primary role of the Business/Executive Sponsor is to ensure that the implementation and deployment of Jama aligns with the organization’s strategic goals and business objectives.
Subject Matter Experts In addition to the Project Lead, the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will define how Jama Connect will be used in your organization. SMEs are those in your organization who understand the overall processes and goals for implementation while serving as empowered representatives of the different teams that will use Jama Connect. These team members should be able to dedicate time to the effort and have the support of their management team, especially in the early phase of deployment.
Jama Connect Administrator The Jama Connect Administrator (preferably more than one) is responsible for learning how to configure your instance of Jama Connect using the administrative functions and will be accountable for the ongoing configuration and administration of Jama Connect. They will become super-users within the organization who can support other users, understand the impact of modifications to the system configuration, and implement configuration changes as appropriate. This role does not need to be technical - all administration happens within the Jama Connect user interface. Often, it is helpful for the Administrator to be close to the business process to understand how changes to Jama configuration will impact processes.
Integration Hub Administrator If Jama Connect is integrated with another tool using a 3rd-party integration solution, the Integration Hub Administrator will manage the configuration of the integration tool.
Administrator for Integrated System If Jama Connect is integrated with another tool, the Integrated System Administrator will be responsible for understanding the impact of configuration requests supporting the integration and can implement the configuration request.
IT/System Administrator For organizations installing Jama Connect in a self-hosted environment (i.e., not Cloud-hosted by Jama Software), the IT/System Administrator(s) are responsible for the initial installation, system setup, and ongoing system administration of Jama Connect.

Impact

How will introducing Jama Connect to your users impact their day-to-day work? Please be ready to explain the benefits of Jama Connect and how it will improve workflows and support corporate objectives. Consider using a change management approach to communicate changes early, gain buy-in, and enable individual user-level success. Connect that success to the organization’s success, as identified by Positive Business Outcomes.

Project Plan

Your rollout plan should outline your desired deployment approach, identify initial projects, and set a high-level timeline. Obtain preliminary resource commitment and buy-in. 

Communication

Think about how you will generate excitement for Jama Connect and demonstrate progress. Provide context for why this is important, including the what and the when. Your plan should outline how you will communicate with various team and organization stakeholders.

Training

Determine how your organization learns best and incorporates tools into their work (e.g., classroom or self-paced, formal or informal, third-party trainer?). Establish a process and resources to onboard new users. Figure out how much training users need, by role, to become proficient using Jama Connect. Consider the Onboarding Jama Connect® and how this can supplement your training materials. Access requires a Jama Software User Community Membership. Register for Community Membership.

Support

You will likely receive questions from users about using Jama Connect®. You will also be handling administrative tasks such as managing users and permissions. Understand how technical issues will route to Jama Software’s Support team. Jama Software’s Community is another valuable resource for peer-to-peer assistance — make sure your users know it and register for membership to get its full benefits.

System

Ensure you have aligned the environment, resources, and system settings for operating Jama Connect with your expected usage. Determine how you will manage updates to the software over time and maintain the database, servers, and services. If you want to integrate Jama Connect with other systems, ensure you have access to administrators for those systems.

References

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