Jama Software, the leader in collaborative requirements management solutions, today announced Contour 3.0, the latest version of its Web-based requirements management software that provides a centralized communications hub to initiate, discuss, change and track requirements throughout the entire application development process. New features in Contour 3.0 include system hierarchy capabilities to manage highly complex software and hardware projects and a new Review Center module that helps connect and socialize team members for improved idea sharing and decision making around project and system requirements.
“Building great software and hardware inherently is a very social process that leads teams to make new realizations, develop new ideas and, hopefully, achieve continuous innovation as projects progress and mature,” explained Eric Winquist, CEO of Jama Software. “With Contour 3.0, we continue to remove the complexity of managing literally thousands of requirements and, through Review Center, bring the best in social communications to both the team and enterprise level.”
Contour helps capture, organize and manage all of the input, decisions and ongoing discussions that revolve around the requirements of a software application or embedded systems project. Delivered through a lightweight, flexible and easy-to-use web application, Contour provides all of the core functionality needed for requirements and scope management, including traceability, coverage, change control, and reporting. Its main function is to connect all stakeholders – from product executives and project managers to business analysts, QA specialists and developers – and keep them in sync through real-time discussions and socialized decision making. Through integrations with leading product development and application lifecycle management (ALM) tools, Contour ensures that requirements are properly managed and, if modified, communicated across the enterprise or among distributed teams.
New features in Contour 3.0 include:
System Hierarchy: a new set of features provides teams with a flexible way to organize and manage complex system hierarchies, such as those found in aircraft, technology devices or component-based software. Teams now can create a structure that accurately represents all of the specifications associated with highly complex and requirements-rich projects. Through a system of components, sets and items, Contour provides the ability to separate and modularize requirements to eliminate redundancies in work and ensure teams have the focus and visibility to track and manage an extremely high volume of dependent and inter-dependent system requirements.
Review Center: a unique module provides teams a fast and agile way to review requirements to gain consensus among a variety of stakeholders. It provides a socialized hub to manage and expedite the entire requirements review and approval lifecycle. Team members can initiate requirement reviews, gather feedback, monitor social interactions and manage an approval process that updates Contour and notifies all team members that requirements are ready for development. Review Center promotes social interaction through the ability to conduct real-time discussions, edit, comment and flag issues, vote for prioritized features and ultimately complete the approval process through electronic sign-offs for an official record of the agreed-upon scope. For corporate compliance and governance, it tracks time invested and keeps a detailed audit trail of approvals and changes to requirements. Contour the only requirements management solution on the market with Review Center.
Learn more: http://www.jamasoftware.com/contour3
“I looked through over 70 requirements management tools, and Jama Contour was far and away the best tool I found. The interface is easy to use and intuitive,” said Mace Volzing, Software Development Manager for IntraPace, an innovative medical devices company. “The flexibility of Contour allows my team to structure our projects to fit our process, and we can customize the reports to deliver the specifications we need to meet compliance standards and publish them in a format that makes the rest of the company happy.”
Pricing and Availability
Contour 3.0 is available now as an on-site solution companies self-host or as a secure, on-demand solution hosted by Jama. Flexible licensing options are available and pricing starts at $700 per named user per year, which is less than $59 per month. For more information please visit www.jamasoftware.com or call toll-free 1-800-679-3058.
