Today, the Sticky ToolLook newsletter from Stickyminds.com featured Jama Contour and conducted a short Q&A with Derwyn Harris, co-founder and senior solutions architect at Jama Software. In the interview he discusses “social traceability” in software development.

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Sticky tool look: Would you give us your definition of “social traceability” as it applies to software development?

Derwyn Harris: Social traceability is a new concept with respect to project or product lifecycles regardless of software, hardware, or other. There are two concepts we hear time and time again from customers looking to improve efficiency and success in their process: collaboration and traceability. Collaboration is the ability for teams to effectively review, approve, and make decisions as part of an on-going process, and traceability connects the artifacts of a project, such as business requirements to technical requirements to test or, in an agile world, epics to stories to test. When we at Jama talk about “social traceability,” we are referring to how collaboration is continually occurring around the different artifacts. If the artifacts are connected through traceability, a solution should leverage that connection not only to show what artifacts are impacted but also to show who is impacted along with the conversations.

If I were a BA working on site with a customer and identified a change, I’d turn to Contour to see the impact of that change and whom it impacts. From there, I could better determine and communicate the scope of the change. Without a solution in place, days or weeks may go by before that information was truly understood.

Stl:What are some tools that can improve that traceability, and how do they help?

DH: That’s a great question because it raises an interesting point. Do we even need tools? The answer is absolutely! We’ve learned that what makes teams successful is their ability to communicate effectively around the project artifacts. Not all teams have the luxury of being a five-person team in a single room with a whiteboard. We’re dealing with complex projects and geographically dispersed teams. True traceability is information tied together for all to see, as compared to being managed separate from the live data. Collaboration should also be inherent in the tool and should utilize the traceability to better understand not only what’s impacted but also who.

Stl:How does social traceability impact our communication and productivity?

DH: In the past decade, we have experienced huge change in the social sphere that has altered how we interact and communicate with each other. This evolution in communication has been a bit slower to take hold in business process and project management. The main reason for this is that, with respect to building products or managing projects, it’s more than just collaboration. Projects need clear decisions and a broader view of how information is connected. I guess one why to think about it is that “social,” in and of itself, is very much about the moment, while a project is much more of a living entity that requires constant iterations and the ability to see the whole as well as the focused. Social traceability provides this holistic view across project information, teams, and time to better communicate and thus improve productivity through better efficiency and visibility.

Stl:What are some current traceability challenges, and how do you approach them?

DH: The biggest problem I see is that teams and organizations simply don’t track traceability. Those that do typically use a separate Excel sheet to manage how artifacts are linked, but the effort it takes to ensure this is accurate and up to date is huge, and it’s actual effectiveness is questionable because it lacks visibility.

Traceability is a problem for the entire team and not just a business analyst or project manager. I had someone ask me once on a demo “Who manages the traceability?” My response was that it’s the responsibility of the entire team. Traceability is managed throughout the lifecycle as we move downstream or upstream. Business analysts work on distilling the requirements or stories from a stakeholder’s requests, and QA works on creating test cases based on the upstream artifacts entered by the business analysts. This is why traceability needs to be considered a social solution. It’s about connecting the people together along with what they are working on in a natural flow that doesn’t burden one person but rather makes the entire team work more efficiently.

Derwyn invites you to send him your comments and questions about social traceability.