Author: Preston Mitchell
Updated: January 2025
Audience: Product Managers, System Engineers, Business Analysts
Products Applicable: Jama Connect®
Use Case
Many customers will need to assign requirements to specific product releases or versions. A simple illustrative example is below.
Best Practice
In this article, we'll use the term "Release," but this generic approach could be applied to assigning requirements to system versions, project phases, etc.
In Jama Connect, we recommend utilizing the "Categories" feature to assign requirements to your product/system's release. Jama Connect does have a legacy "Release" feature, but it has the following limitations that Categories overcomes:
| Legacy Release feature -> | Challenge -> | -> Solved by Categories |
| Can only assign to 1 release/version at a time | When you create a new version of a requirement and assign it to new release, you lose the history of the initial release assignment | Allows requirements assigned to multiple product releases |
| Every Jama Connect project has a unique set of releases | Data inconsistency / human error. Inability to reuse the requirements | Product releases can be applied globally or to multiple projects |
| The applicable version of the requirement is not visible in the Release view | It is hard to tell which version of the requirement applies to which product release | Captures version of requirement when it was assigned to the release |
| The requirement version is changed when the release is added or removed | Causes "version churn" in the version history table when it's not an impactful change to the requirement |
No unnecessary version change when categories are applied/removed still captured in item activity history |
| Others... |
|
Implementation
- Work with an Org Admin to enable categories and add your categories (e.g., list of Release or Product Versions)
- Determine which projects the categories should be visible in (or make them global)
- Enable Categories in relevant views of Jama Connect
- Start using categories in the project to assign requirements to your specific product releases/versions
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- Use Baselines at critical phase gates or milestones to capture point-in-time snapshots of all items included in that Release
Recommended (optional): Disable legacy Release tab
References
- Categories Help Guide
- Some considerations: batch updating Categories is limited to 1 list view page / 50 items. Enhancing this is on Jama Software's roadmap.
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