This blog previews our recent webinar. To watch the entire presentation, visit: “Breaking Through Organizational Inertia and Driving Adoption”

Breaking Through Organizational Inertia and Driving Adoption

Change is hard. Even the most advanced semiconductor organizations struggle to adopt new processes and tools. Resistance doesn’t result from bad intentions; instead, it arises from organizational inertia: entrenched cultures, siloed teams, and the very human tendency to stick with what’s familiar.

In this practical discussion, we explore how engineering teams are overcoming these challenges. Steve Rush, Principal Solutions Lead at Jama Software, shares proven approaches to reduce resistance, align teams, and drive lasting adoption of new processes.

What You’ll Learn:

• Identify what organizational inertia looks like in practice and how to address it
• Reframe conversations with resistant teams and stakeholders to foster alignment
• Practical strategies for driving requirements management adoption and ensuring long-term success
• Build momentum for change in complex semiconductor environments

If your organization is struggling to turn process change into real adoption, this session will share actionable ways to create traction where it matters most.

WEBINAR PREVIEW – WATCH ENTIRE PRESENTATION HERE

TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Steve Rush: Thanks so much, Juliet. I really appreciate that introduction. Well, hello everyone. My name is Steve Rush, and as Juliet said, I’m a principal solutions consultant here at Jama Software. And I’m genuinely excited to dig into this topic with you today. It’s one that’s close to my heart, and I think it’s something that everyone in our industry has run into at some point. Here’s what we’re going to cover. We’ll open up and frame the issue of organizational inertia. We’ll diagnose the inertia and profile the forms of it that may feel very familiar to you. We’ll talk about how to reframe the conversation with resistant teams. We’ll get into what actually works when it comes to driving adoption, and we’ll close with some questions from the audience.

Let’s get into it. First, let’s start with something I think we can all agree on. Change is hard. Even the most advanced engineering organizations in the world struggle with this, not because of bad intentions, but because of organizational inertia. That is a fact. Change agents trying to deliver better business outcomes, whether it’s digital transformation or getting ready for the era of AI, can feel like they’re steering ships through rough waters, and that’s because they are. Here at Jama Software, we work with some of the largest companies in the world, organizations with a huge collective history. Their tools, processes, systems, and people are deeply entrenched. Change can be volatile, turbulent, or just painfully slow. But here’s the good news. Adoption doesn’t have to be. Let’s unpack this together.

So what does organizational inertia actually look like? I chose this word inertia intentionally. I could have called this webinar overcoming organizational resistance, but I think that word, resistance, is confrontational right out of the gate, and I think it puts people on the defensive before the conversation even starts. I think inertia is a better term because this type of resistance or inertia can be passive or active. Institutional resistance is a form of active inertia. Organizational silos are a form of passive inertia, and I think the word is more precise here and more useful in our context. I think naming the inertia and understanding it serve you in two important ways.

First, it helps the change agent find the right solution. Not every approach fits every situation. Understanding which form of inertia you’re dealing with, whether that’s passive avoidance, hard personalities, institutional friction, or silos, helps you choose the right response rather than applying a one-size-fits-all solution. Second, it helps you communicate credibly to the people responsible for your success. Change agents can’t go it alone. You need support. The way you earn that support is by articulating the obstacles clearly, building a shared understanding of what you’re up against and what it will take to move through it.

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

Rush: Here are three forms of inertia that will probably feel familiar. Let’s walk through each one. First, institutional resistance. Teams have established workflows, tools, and norms, and any new tool or workflow can threaten the comfort of the familiar, even if the familiar may be efficient in that individual team’s context. The problem is that a familiar individual process or tool is siloed off and not integrated into a larger system context, causing issues with collaboration, problems with traceability, and re-usability. The flags here to watch out for are people saying things like this. “This new tool you want me to learn is too hard, or this new process is slowing us down, or the classic, why are we being forced to do this?” And to be fair, that last one contains a legitimate question underneath it. People want to understand why. Institutional resistance isn’t always loud. Passive avoidance, like quietly working around a new tool or falling back to legacy processes and homegrown spreadsheets, is a form of resistance as well. It’s one that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it.

Next, siloed teams. Teams are not working in a single source of truth, or not working in a common enough model. Requirements in this case can look different to the hardware engineer, the software engineer, and the systems engineer. And when teams operate in separate tools, with separate workflows and siloed off processes, they’re often solving the same problems in parallel, completely unaware of each other. The flags with this one tend to surface later, late-stage changes, missed approvals, finger-pointing at stage gates, and products that consistently miss launch dates, with everyone having a different explanation as to why. That is the silo talking.

These teams also miss the opportunity to learn from one another. A tool or process is being designed in isolation from the very groups that sit upstream and downstream that depend on their work. Personality-driven pushback. One skeptical voice can stall adoption across an entire team. Individuals drive organizational change for better or worse. And the loudest voice in the room isn’t always the wisest. The flags here to watch out for are lack of participation, unconstructive criticism, and skepticism without any rationale. Listen for this specifically. If someone says no without a reason, that’s a flag. No, and here’s why: it’s a conversation. No, just by itself is a wall. Here are a few patterns and sample feedback you’ll recognize when pushing a new tool like Jama Connect. We already track that in a spreadsheet. This is a software team problem, not ours. We don’t have time to learn a new tool right now. Our process works fine. It’s always worked. Can we map these patterns to the forms of inertia we just saw?

Here’s how I would map it back to the previous slide. I think this understanding is key, so we know how to respond and implement the right solutions, how to give support when we need more discovery, when we push back, and when we escalate. Now, the forms of inertia I’ve already outlined are broad, and I bet they’re familiar to everyone that’s listening in on this webinar, but I want to segue a bit and talk about the semiconductor industry specifically because I think they have a couple of unique challenges, but I hope that resonates across industries as well, and you pick something up. First, no unified data model.

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

Rush: There is no one-size-fits-all data model for the semiconductor industry. The context in which the chips are utilized often drives much of the development. A chip going into a car might require a safety element out of context model. A chip going into a rocket might need to meet the objectives of DO-178C. A lab-on-a-chip project will need to adhere to certain medical standards. Oftentimes, these companies need to develop the data model from scratch, and that effort in and of itself is just a daunting task, so they choose not to do it because it’s too time-consuming and too difficult, and they only adopt a requirements management tool like Jama Connect if they’re forced to.

But we know there are studies suggesting that improved requirements and using a dedicated requirements management tool like Jama Connect reduce late-stage changes and defects and improve productivity. So it’s really in the company’s interest to adopt a tool like this. This is also where I think Jama Connect and our new semiconductor solution can help because it’s tailored for common semiconductor use cases. You can start using the tool right away for automotive manufacturing and shift design. It’s also very flexible, so you can configure it differently for different use cases very shortly after your Jama Connect purchase.

Too much functional safety focus. Functional safety tends to own the very first implementations of a tool like Jama Connect, which makes sense because good requirements management practices and processes are mandated in standards like ISO 26262 and DO-178C. So companies go out, and they purchase a requirements management tool if they’re mandated to meet the objectives of those standards, but they struggle to roll it out beyond those functional safety use cases, despite the fact that they have problems with traceability and collaboration, which the requirements management tool can help solve. So a functional safety bias may exist, which holds the tool back from expanding more broadly across teams and organizations, and those teams just end up not taking full advantage of the tool. Familiar wins the day.

THIS HAS BEEN A PREVIEW – TO WATCH THE ENTIRE WEBINAR, VISIT:
Breaking Through Organizational Inertia and Driving Adoption

The post [Webinar Recap] Breaking Through Organizational Inertia and Driving Adoption appeared first on Jama Software.

This blog previews our Whitepaper, “Accelerating Innovation: Integrating Jama Connect® and Jira® for Enhanced Requirements Management in the Semiconductor Industry” – To download the entire asset, visit HERE.

Accelerating Innovation: Integrating Jama Connect and Jira for Enhanced Requirements Management in the Semiconductor Industry

The semiconductor industry operates under immense pressure to deliver increasingly complex and powerful integrated circuits (ICs) on compressed timelines. This complexity, spanning hardware design, software/firmware development, and stringent verification processes, creates significant challenges for traditional requirements management. Siloed tools and manual tracking methods often lead to misaligned teams, costly rework, and delayed time-to-market. This whitepaper explores how integrating Jama Connect for requirements management with Atlassian Jira for agile task tracking provides a transformative solution. By implementing a Traceable Agile™ methodology, semiconductor firms can establish Live Traceability™ across the entire product development lifecycle. This creates a digital thread connecting high-level system requirements to individual hardware and software development tasks, streamlining reviews, enabling real-time impact analysis, and ultimately accelerating the delivery of high-quality, compliant semiconductor products.

Introduction: The Complexity Challenge in Semiconductor Development

The relentless drive for smaller, faster, and more power-efficient chips defines the semiconductor industry. From initial architectural specifications to tape-out and final validation, the development lifecycle is a highly complex, multidisciplinary effort. Modern System-on-Chip (SoC) designs integrate processors, memory, peripherals, and complex software/firmware, all on a single piece of silicon. Increasingly, the industry is adopting chiplet-based architectures, where smaller, modular silicon dies are interconnected to form a complete system. This approach offers greater design flexibility, improved yield, and the ability to mix-and-match process nodes, but it also introduces new challenges in managing requirements across these modular components. This convergence of hardware and software engineering, combined with the rise of chiplet architectures, creates enormous challenges for managing requirements effectively.

Unique Pressures of the IC Lifecycle

Semiconductor projects are characterized by:

• High Interdependency: Firmware development cannot proceed without stable hardware specifications. A change in a hardware block can have cascading effects on software drivers and system-level performance.
• Long Development Cycles: Despite agile practices in software, the hardware design and fabrication process is long and less flexible. Rework is exceptionally expensive, especially if defects are found post-fabrication.
• Stringent Compliance: In sectors like automotive (ISO 26262) or industrial applications, proving that every requirement has been met, verified, and validated is a non-negotiable regulatory mandate.

The Pitfalls of Disconnected Toolchains

Many semiconductor organizations rely on a patchwork of tools to manage this complexity. Requirements may live in documents or spreadsheets, while hardware teams use specialized EDA tools and software teams use agile platforms like Jira. This fragmentation creates information silos, making it nearly impossible to maintain a clear, holistic view of the project. Manual traceability efforts are error-prone and cannot keep pace with development, leading to misalignments, missed requirements, and significant project risk.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: How to Select the Right Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

The Limitations of Jira Alone for Semiconductor Requirements Management

While Jira is an exceptional tool for managing agile software development tasks, sprints, and backlogs, its capabilities do not extend to the rigorous needs of full-lifecycle requirements management in a complex hardware/software environment. Using Jira as the sole platform for requirements introduces several critical limitations.

Lack of End-to-End Traceability

Jira was not designed to create a “digital thread” from a high-level market requirement down through system specifications, architectural design, component-level user stories, and final test cases. Without this traceability, answering critical questions becomes a resource-intensive manual exercise:

• Which software features are impacted by a change in a hardware register?
• Have all safety requirements been covered by both hardware design and software validation tests?
• What is the true status of a customer-facing feature that spans multiple engineering disciplines?

This lack of visibility is a leading cause of project delays and quality issues. The cost to fix a defect found during system testing is exponentially higher than one caught during the initial definition phase.

Inefficient Review and Approval Cycles

Reviewing complex requirement documents is a major bottleneck. Circulating large documents for feedback results in fragmented comments, version control chaos, and a significant administrative burden on systems engineers and project managers. Stakeholders from different teams (Architecture, RTL Design, Firmware, Validation) must wait for the entire document to be ready, slowing down the feedback loop.

Limited Visibility for Program Managers

Program managers need real-time insight into development progress against core requirements in a Jira-only environment. They see sprint progress and task completion, but this data is disconnected from the high-level project goals. It is difficult to know if the work being done is truly aligned with customer needs or if teams are spending resources on unlinked, low-priority tasks.

Ambiguous System Definitions

Agile methodologies sometimes de-emphasize formal documentation, with teams attempting to decompose high-level needs directly into user stories in Jira. This approach is insufficient for complex systems like an SoC. User stories describe user interactions but do not provide the complete functional and non-functional definition of what the system must do. This can lead to an incomplete or evolving system definition that lacks a stable, versioned source of truth.

RELATED: Traceable Agile™ – Speed AND Quality Are Possible for Software Factories in Safety-critical Industries

A Modern Solution: Integrating Jama Connect with Jira

The solution is not to replace Jira but to augment it. By integrating Jama Connect, a purpose-built requirements management platform, with Jira, organizations can create a powerful, connected ecosystem
that supports the entire development lifecycle.

Introducing Traceable Agile

Traceable Agile is a methodology that blends the discipline of systems engineering with the speed and flexibility of agile development. Jama Connect serves as the system of record for all requirements, from customer needs down to detailed technical specifications. Jira remains the system of action for the software development teams to manage their work. The integration ensures that these two systems are in constant communication.

This model operates as follows:

1. Define and Manage Requirements in Jama Connect: Systems engineers, architects, and product managers define, analyze, and review requirements within Jama Connect’s collaborative environment.
2. Generate Development Tasks in Jira: Once requirements are approved, traceable development tasks (epics, user stories) are created in the Jira backlog directly from Jama Connect, preserving the link to the source requirement.
3. Sync Progress in Real Time: As development teams update task status, log bugs, and complete sprints in Jira, this information is automatically synchronized back to Jama Connect. This provides stakeholders with real-time visibility into how development work is fulfilling the requirements.

Building the Digital Thread Across Hardware and Software

For semiconductor teams, this integration creates a unified digital thread. For example, a high-level requirement for “low-power video encoding” in Jama Connect can be traced downstream to:

• The hardware specification for the video encoder block.
• The software user story in Jira for developing the encoder driver.
• The verification test plan for validating power consumption.
• The system-level test case that confirms end-to-end functionality.

This connected view ensures that all disciplines are working from the same set of approved requirements.

The Power of Live Traceability and Live Trace Explorer™ in a Semiconductor Context

Jama Connect’s Live Trace Explorer is the cornerstone of this integration. It provides a dynamic, real-time view of all relationships between requirements, eg…PRD and MRD types, development tasks, and tests. Unlike static, manually generated traceability matrices, this view is always up to date. It measures your progress with traceability quality and coverage.

For a semiconductor project, this means you can instantly:

• Identify Gaps: See which hardware requirements have no associated verification tests or which software features lack links to a parent system requirement.
• Perform Impact Analysis: When a marketing requirement changes, you can immediately see all connected hardware blocks, software modules, and test cases that will be impacted.
• Simply Compliance Reporting: Generate traceability reports required by specific industry standards with the click of a button, demonstrating complete coverage from requirements to validation.

To Learn the Key Benefits for Semiconductor Engineering Teams, Download this Entire Whitepaper at:
Accelerating Innovation: Integrating Jama Connect® and Jira® for Enhanced Requirements Management in the Semiconductor Industry

The post Accelerating Innovation: Integrating Jama Connect® and Jira® for Enhanced Requirements Management in the Semiconductor Industry appeared first on Jama Software.

This blog overviews our recent Datasheet, “Streamline Complex Product Quality Compliance, and Time-to-completion, with Jama Connect for Semiconductors” – To download the entire asset, click HERE.

Streamline Complex Product Quality, Compliance, and Time-to-completion with Jama Connect for Semiconductors

Semiconductor companies face increasing challenges in developing their next-generation products and product families. Product customization and resulting variants make it difficult for development teams to establish and maintain traceability throughout their engineering workflows, especially when design changes occur frequently. This often results in missed ship dates, cost overruns, dissatisfied customers, and, worse still, quality escapes.

Jama Connect for Semiconductors is a custom-built, powerful, and easy-to-use solution that helps automate requirements, testing, and traceability engineering processes that are often done manually in Excel and Word. With Jama Connect for Semiconductors, you will streamline requirements definition and management, bolster review and approval processes, and integrate tests so you can develop the right products with speed, quality, and data integrity – all while maintaining necessary standards compliance.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: How to Select the Right Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

KEY BENEFITS

• Accelerated Adoption: Templates, data models, and item types in Jama Connect are preconfigured for common Semiconductor use cases, delivered on day one.
• Single Source of Truth: A shared data repository enables Silicon Planners, Platform and Component Architects, Engineers, Testers, and others to collaborate effectively across the product life cycle, helping teams respond to change and mitigate risks.
• Visibility Leads to Accountability: Reports and indicators provide real-time status updates on program progress toward milestones.
• Reusability: Coordinate custom silicon definition through advanced reuse and sync capabilities to increase work efficiency and consistency.
• Contextual Guidance: A Procedure Guide tailored for Semiconductor provides simple process descriptions from the initial Stakeholder MRD to System-level PRDs, through validation and verification.

Jama Connect for Semiconductors is a solution designed and optimized for semiconductor companies. It includes an out-of-the-box Traceability Information Model aligned with systems engineering and semiconductor design best practices, end-to-end traceability from the high-level MRD through post-silicon validation, and a procedure guide with detailed steps for requirement capture, traceability, collaboration, verification reviews, and configuration management baselines.

Jama Connect for Semiconductors: Providing Real-Time Status of Project Requirements

Jama Connect for Semiconductors helps you stay ahead of the competition by strengthening your ability to manage requirements for developing the right products quickly, with high quality, data integrity, and compliance with necessary standards.

To learn more, visit us at jamasoftware.com/solutions/semiconductor

DOWNLOAD THIS ASSET: Streamline Complex Product Quality, Compliance, and Time-to-completion with Jama Connect for Semiconductors

The post Streamline Complex Product Quality, Compliance, and Time-to-completion with Jama Connect® for Semiconductors appeared first on Jama Software.

Jama Connect for Semiconductors provides a purpose-built solution for managing requirements, traceability, and engineering governance across the semiconductor product lifecycle.

This scalable framework is designed to meet the unique needs of semiconductor teams, enabling faster adoption and seamless integration into your development processes.

Watch our vlog to listen to Jama Software’s Neil Stroud – General Manager, Automotive & Semiconductor, and Steve Rush – Principal Solutions Consultant, discuss how semiconductor teams can streamline development and improve collaboration with Jama Connect for Semiconductors, which includes:

• Templates tailored to semiconductor use cases, from MRD management to post-silicon validation
• Comprehensive procedure and configuration guides
• Best practices for IP reuse and traceability
• Integration resources for tools like Jira and pre-silicon testing platforms

Transform your semiconductor development process with Jama Connect and drive innovation with confidence.

Jama Connect for Semiconductors: Simplify Complexity, Accelerate Innovation

Neil Stroud: Hi. My name is Neil Stroud. I’m General Manager of our semiconductor business unit, and I’m joined here by Steve.

Steve Rush: Hi there. I’m Steve Rush, Principal Solutions Consultant on our semiconductor team. Happy to be here today.

Stroud: Hey, Steve. So we’ve got some exciting news to introduce to you today. But before we get into that, I wanted to introduce some context. So, Jama Connect has pretty much become the de facto standard across the whole semiconductor industry. And when we look at that industry, obviously, that’s made up of a number of subsegments such as IP vendors, fabless semiconductor, foundry, EDA tools, and we cover the whole gamut of the ecosystem.

We’ve been helping customers for a long time, managing that complexity, not only with the semiconductor side of the development, but also we see increasingly where the software stack is part and parcel of the whole solution that the semiconductor ecosystem provides. So there are many aspects to it. Of course, compliance is a key part as we see products go into things like safety and security solutions.

So we’re driving that acceleration, that innovation, that time to market, that improved quality. So we’ve been doing this for a while. We’ve gotten to understand the problems intimately. Steve, maybe you can comment. What have you learned from engaging with these semiconductor customers?

Rush: Their challenges are complex. Their products are mind-bogglingly complex. I hear a lot of consistent challenges through the industry around traceability, engineering governance, and how they can create a consistent data model to work against.

Reuse is a huge aspect of what they do. How do I reuse my existing IP in a different context or customization that I am working on with my customers? And, frankly, Jama Connect is really well aligned to solve some of these problems. But speaking semiconductor language, meeting our customers where they are, how you actually perform this and do this in Jama Connect, has always been sort of a bit of a mystery. And we’re excited about this new semiconductor solution that we’re gonna talk about today, sort of unpack a little bit about that, and speak more semiconductor language, tune these to the solutions that this, you know, wide-ranging industry is looking for.

Stroud: Yeah. Excellent. And I just wanna pick up on a phrase that you used there that’s near and dear to my heart. You mentioned engineering governance, and I think we’re kind of at an inflection point, it feels, from the various conversations we’re having with our customers who are using Jama Connect today, but also customers who are thinking about using it. This whole concept of engineering governance and, you know, trying to get oversight and control over the whole engineering organization, which typically, historically, has been, you know, hardware and software as two independent domains.

This whole concept of engineering governance, where you can unify those two worlds, which, let’s face it, are very different. You know, we’ve got semiconductor hardware development that typically is more classical waterfall v model versus software, which is Agile, you know, CICD, going at a hundred miles an hour kind of thing. So, maybe you can just comment a little bit more about that engineering governance and how Jama Connect has a role to play there.

RELATED: SUSS Chooses Jama Connect to Support a New Standardized Development Process for Semiconductor Equipment and Solutions

Rush: Yeah. I mean, the intersection of hardware and software, we see that across many industries. But I would say semiconductor, probably more than any other industry that I’ve worked with, relies so much on institutional knowledge that that probably is keeping, you know, their C-Suite and the managers sort of up at night that they’re so reliant on existing knowledge and how that knowledge sort of transfers from people to people and from team to team is just a huge challenge. And I think part of what this solution and Jama Connect bring to bear is that it creates more transparency and accountability, helps you identify risks early on in the process to allow you to sort of shift left in that process to sort of get those requirements right before you have to figure out you need to change, like, much further down the stream.

They’re looking for something more lightweight that users can adopt. The way that they work is not ultimately gonna change, but it’s gonna improve.

So by shifting the way that we think about requirements and engineering data and putting that into a very configurable model that can create consistency, and we talk about sort of, like, common enough in a lot of our blogs and frameworks. We want a common enough framework that people can work against, that’s unified, that we can report against, but still allow teams sort of have that autonomy to make tweaks and customizations for their particular use cases. And I think Jama Connect really strikes that balance, and this solution in particular does that.

Stroud: Great. And that’s a great segue into the big news. What are we announcing today?

Rush: We are very excited to announce a brand new semiconductor solution for Jama Connect. So what this solution is is a brand new set of templates, more agnostic in terms of use case. Honoring systems engineering but tuning these templates to really common semiconductor use cases for your EDA companies, your IDM companies, the way that they think and see the world, really, those customers need a way and a perspective to visualize how they might set their data up in Jama Connect, and we’re giving them that new great starting point. So this new solution, including these new templates, is something that we’re really excited about. There’s an exhaustive procedure guide that explains how to work in Jama Connect from high-level MRD all the way down to post-silicon validation, including some aspects.

Stroud: So, how do I reuse IP cores across different IT blocks that I’m managing? What does that look like exactly? How do I manage that? What does good look like in Jama Connect?

Rush: We provide all of these examples and a rich set of resources for our customers to use and get a quicker and shorter time to value of their Jama Connect implementation. So we’re really excited about it.

Stroud: It sounds really exciting. So we touched a little bit earlier on the various subsegments within the semiconductor industry. So I’m assuming this solution is relevant regardless of where you sit in that supply chain. Is that true?

Rush:  Yeah. You know, there are a couple of elements to it that are tuned to, like, EDA, IDM. They think of the IP block or IP core use case as really relevant to them. But also sort of, like, stepping back, if you’re just working on an alarm system for a machine that’s developing sort of the wafers for the the dye or a photolithography machine where you’re just generally sort of, you know, visualizing the product that you build in more of a systems capability, this is a really great starting point for all of those use cases. And then we can sort of tune it from there. EEA and IDM specifically, they have some unique aspects to it, so we give you a little bit of a preview. But Jama Connect, you know, right from the get-go, if I’m one of these other segments in sort of the manufacturing or fabrication space, I can just make a copy of this project, remove a couple of elements, and start working on day one.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution for Semiconductor

Stroud: So it’s really scalable as well for those, as you say, IDM is a great example where they’re covering effectively multiple subsegments. It sounds like it was across those subsegments for them as well. So excellent.

So I think I understand the value to the engineer, you know, that it helps me to go faster. It helps me get up and running much quicker. I’m sure there’s more to it than that. But also, you know, what the relevance to the C-suite, you know, from a high-level perspective? Maybe you can talk about those two different personas and the value of each of those.

Rush: Sure. There’s quite a lot of crossover, but I would say, if I’m in the C-suite, I would identify risks earlier on in the process. So by giving you a consistent data model and some views of, like, what good looks like, we have some great views of really built-out sample data, using the rich traceability that’s part of these to give you a sort of at-a-glance view. What does a good Trace Score™ look like? What does a good Trace Score for a particular component mean? How do I identify risks where I have gaps in coverage?

I think those are gonna be really interesting to the C-suite as well as this framework. So getting everybody working in sort of a consistent, repeatable way, which then becomes reportable and can, you know, increase transparency for that C-suite to see sort of how exactly we are tracking, what the status of our marketing requirements is, how much testing we’ve done on our technical requirements or systems. At a glance, they can get into Jama Connect, see a couple of dashboard examples, and visualize right away how they can answer some of these really important questions.

Stroud: And then at the engineering level?

Rush: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people are just wondering how I get my job done within Jama Connect, and I think the procedure guide is just a perfect example. So if I am the owner of the MRD, you know, I have a lot of stakeholders that I have to get involved … how do I get that approved?

What are the steps to cascade that down to, like, the systems team that’s gonna write those first-order technical requirements? The procedure guide is like it’s it’s almost following it’s like following cooking instructions. Do this, do that, within Jama Connect to help build an approved work product, which I can then check into my document management system or leave or memorialize in a Jama Connect baseline. So I think those more detailed steps are gonna be really helpful for the engineers.

Stroud: Right. So I think it’s clear to me that this is a huge value and benefit to a new Jama Connect user. Is there relevance here for existing Jama Connect users as well, do you think?

Rush: Yeah. I think so. I mean, the solutions site that we put together, where this procedure guy is going to live, is going to have a lot of rich content. So we’re gonna have some curated marketing content, best practices, customer testimonials, things like this, as well as some best practice integration patterns. So if they’ve been wondering how to plug into Jira or a, like, a pre-silicon testing tool, there’s gonna be documentation on, like, you know, what the what that integration looks like and the best practices and use cases we support.

It’s always good to sort of, like, go back to the basics, I think, if you are a Jama Connect customer and you’ve been here for a few years. Like, very recently, I had a call with an EDA company, and they were talking about how to set up our system for IP reuse across most of these custom contexts that we’re gonna be building in the future. And, really, they’ve been sitting on the functionality the entire time, just haven’t had the vision on how to bring that all together, the procedures. And, actually, the procedure guide gives you sort of step-by-step examples on how to take these IP cores and reuse them into different project context. So I think there’s a lot of value for both the new customer and the existing customer.

Stroud: Excellent. So lots of value here. How do customers get hold of it?

Rush: Yeah. So if you’re not a Jama Connect customer yet, you can talk to your account executive. When you purchase Jama Connect, we will actually set you up with the instance. There’s going to be a cost associated with that, but it is something that we absolutely recommend. Shortens that time to value. Your configuration is really ready on day one. If you’re an existing Jama Software customer, you can talk to your customer success manager, and they can talk to you about sort of opting into this and getting you access to the solution space, which is gonna be part of the Jama Software community, as well as some of the templates that we’re developing.

Stroud: That’s great. So looking ahead, obviously, this is just the first release, the first instantiation. I’m assuming we’ve got a road map of features. We’ll continue to add and add more value as we go.

I know one of the hot topics in the industry, you know, in recent weeks and months, is around chiplets. I know that’s something we’re thinking about. So maybe you can talk a little bit about where we’re heading and what comes next.

RELATED: Extending End-to-End Traceability into the Semiconductor Design Cycle

Rush: Yeah. Yeah. That is on the docket. So chiplets are certainly on our mind. A system-on-chip management example is on my mind. I think that Jama Connect’s variant management, library, and reuse capabilities are really primed to help solve this problem. It’s just about developing some of that sample data and providing those examples that really resonate with the customer base. So that is something that is on the docket, and we’re gonna spend some time on it in the next couple of weeks here.

One-click data sheet generation. So, data sheet generation can usually be painful for those in the industry. So just giving you sort of, like, a very vanilla report that you can customize and tweak to put your branding on that will produce your data, in a data sheet format really nicely and beautifully. And then, industry-specific use cases, lab-on-chip, medical, and aerospace all have their unique flavors of certain things. They care about certain standards and regulations, and how we model Jama Connect will look a little bit different in each one of these use cases, so we’ll be tackling that as well.

Stroud: There is lots of goodness to come as well. So this has been a great conversation. I’ve learned a lot. Hopefully, our listeners have picked up on this great solution we’ve got coming out. Maybe you can just spend a moment to summarize what we’ve talked about and why this is a game changer for our customers.

Rush: Yep. So the new solution’s official launch date is December 2025. This is gonna include the new solutions site, which will have the procedure guide, some of that documentation on integration resources, and a few other aspects, as well as new templates tuned to the gem to the semiconductor industry that represent how you go from managing the high-level MRD all the way through post-silicon validation. So you’ll see that in a template example, and we’re really excited about where it goes next.

Stroud: Thanks, Steve, and thanks to all for watching. If you’d like to learn more about how Jama Connect can transform your semiconductor projects, visit our website at jamasoftware.com – If you’re already a Jama Software customer, your success manager or Jama Software consultant can provide additional insights. Together, we can drive innovation and build better outcomes.

The post Transforming Semiconductor Development with Jama Connect®’s New Framework appeared first on Jama Software.

Jama Connect^® for Semiconductors Solution – It’s about time!

Jama Software recently announced the release of a solution tailored for the Semiconductor industry! This highly anticipated release has been eagerly awaited by both Jama Software’s Semiconductor team and customers, who are excited to see how it can address their requirements and data governance challenges.

As someone with a 24-year career in the semiconductor industry, primarily focused on Requirements Engineering for silicon and networking products, I’ve been anticipating this release for quite some time. My experience includes working with various tools, homegrown solutions, and the ubiquitous but limited Microsoft Word and Excel. Jama Connect stood out early on for its usability, ensuring engineering teams could adopt it without slowing down project cycles—a critical factor for success.

Addressing Semiconductor Complexity

The semiconductor industry’s complexity and variability have long posed challenges for requirements management tools. Fabless silicon design companies, EDA tool developers, and manufacturers all have unique data needs. A solution for this industry must be both configurable and governable. Unlike other industries, semiconductors lack a standardized information architecture, leading to locally optimized but unscalable solutions.

Jama Connect for Semiconductors addresses these challenges by offering a tailored, scalable solution. It provides a framework that balances flexibility with governance, making it easier for teams to manage requirements effectively.

RELATED: Accelerating Innovation: Integrating Jama Connect and Jira^® for Enhanced Requirements Management in the Semiconductor Industry

Why Jama Connect is the Standard

In a recent video podcast (CLICK TO WATCH), Jama Software’s Semiconductor GM Neil Stroud described Jama Connect as the “incumbent standard” in the semiconductor industry. While the new solution was just launched, many semiconductor companies have already adopted Jama Connect as a step up from scattered document-based systems. Its SaaS cloud deployment, easy imports from Word or Excel, and support from Jama Connect Solutions Consultants enable teams to get up and running quickly.

Many companies have realized the need to modernize their requirements and data governance practices. Jama Connect’s usability, combined with expert consulting, has helped teams tailor the solution to their needs, even when starting with frameworks designed for other industries.

Time to Efficiency

A new Jama Connect deployment delivers value immediately. For example, a set of 100 requirements can be sent for review to 20 stakeholders in just a morning. The data architecture can be adjusted to match the current format, and documents can be imported into the tool. Reviewers, even those without Jama Connect licenses, can participate for free. This streamlined process reduces the time and effort required for reviews.

Jama Connect Advisor™ further enhances efficiency by identifying ambiguities and errors in requirements, improving clarity before reviews begin. This reduces the time reviewers spend asking clarifying questions, speeding up the entire process.

RELATED: Jama Connect Features in Five: Review Center for Semiconductor Development

Time to Decide

Deciding on a requirements management solution can be a lengthy process for large organizations. However, a Jama Connect for Semiconductors SaaS pilot can be configured in days, complete with SOC2 and other security features. Jama Software’s Solutions Consultants work with teams to define the scope of the pilot and establish success metrics, ensuring a focused and effective evaluation.

Time to Value

Semiconductor companies need to see tangible benefits from deploying Jama Connect. Executives and senior leaders value predictable cycle times and reduced costs from earlier defect identification. Over time, as more data is governed within Jama Connect, product definitions become clearer, and schedule volatility decreases. The tagline “Visibility leads to Accountability” highlights how Jama Connect provides leaders with progress indicators to monitor and address issues proactively.

Engineering managers benefit from a deployment path that doesn’t disrupt tight schedules. Jama Connect’s test capabilities, including a new feature in beta that generates test cases from requirements, help teams assess product quality and readiness. Integrations with common semiconductor tools and the Jama Connect Interchange API enable a comprehensive view of the development process.

For engineers, the intuitive user interface and immediate benefits of the Review Center help overcome initial skepticism. While transitioning from document-based systems to a modern requirements management solution requires effort, the long-term benefits are significant.

Time to Get Started

Looking back on my career in semiconductor requirements engineering, I often wished for a purpose-built solution like Jama Connect for Semiconductors. This solution offers the flexibility and governance needed to address the industry’s unique challenges. If you’re interested in learning more, Jama Software is ready to help. Current customers can reach out to their Customer Success Manager, while new prospects can contact their Account Executive to schedule a demo and discuss next steps.

Intelligently improve your development process with Jama Connect:
Start your free 30-day trial!

The post Jama Connect® for Semiconductors Solution – It’s about time! appeared first on Jama Software.

Jama Connect^® Features in Five: Semiconductor Solution

In this Features in Five session, Steve Rush, Principal Solutions Consultant at Jama Software, introduces our purpose-built semiconductor solution, designed to accelerate implementation and maximize value for your projects.

Key highlights include:

• Ready-to-use project templates tailored for semiconductor workflows, including IP block and core examples.
• A dedicated community space with process documentation, templates, and integration resources.
• Tools for complete traceability, from stakeholder requirements to post-silicon validation.

With these features, Jama Connect streamlines semiconductor development, helping teams manage risks, changes, and traceability with ease.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Introduction to Jama Connect for Semiconductors

Steve Rush: My name is Steve, Principal Solutions Consultant for Semiconductors here at Jama Software. I’m happy to showcase our new Semiconductor Solution for Jama Connect. It gives companies a head start on their Jama Connect implementation, shortening time to value on their investment. Subsegments like integrated device manufacturing, IP, fabless, and design companies can use this solution out-of-the-box from day one. It can also easily be tailored for manufacturing use cases. The solution itself is made of multiple components.

First, there is a new suite of project templates. These illustrate best practices for data model setup and project organization tuned to the semiconductor industry, robust traceability, IP block and IP core examples, and much more.

Our new community space includes process documentation, importable templates and reports, curated marketing assets, and details on common integration use cases for the semiconductor industry.

RELATED: SUSS Chooses Jama Connect to Support a New Standardized Development Process for Semiconductor Equipment and Solutions

Rush: Let’s take a tour of the new projects that come with the semiconductor solution for Jama Connect. You’ll see a few new sets of projects that come with this instance of Jama Connect. First are some automotive examples, one with mock example data, another with microcontroller data showing what an automotive semiconductor project might look like for a particular microcontroller, and then a template that goes along with it for easy copying for a new project.

Our flagship project, which I’ll demo here for you in a second, is the integrated semiconductor system example with GPU data and then the template that goes along with it for easy copying for reuse. And then finally, the semiconductor example data project and template that goes along with it for a hardware-only project.

Let’s take a deeper look at the flagship project, the integrated semiconductor system example with GPU.

This project comes with a new data model honoring the systems engineering bee, illustrating how we decompose the system from a high-level stakeholder Market Requirements Document (MRD) all the way through a a post silicon validation.

High-level stakeholder requirements are derived into system requirements. We call this a Product Requirements Document (PRD) in the semiconductor context. Architectural elements can be linked to the system requirements for allocation. System requirements are distilled into hardware or software domains, respectively.

And then we capture design information as well for those particular domains, separating the requirements from the design, the requirements describing what the system shall do, and the design, how the system will do it. We also have an example project for managing IP blocks or IP cores with a separate hardware block requirement type, design details, and a datasheet item.

RELATED: Transforming Semiconductor Development with Jama Connect’s New Framework

The datasheet item can be used to manage key features of that IP core, which we keep separate and distinct from the requirements item. And then finally, verification and validation for both the stakeholder MRD and PRD levels, as well as pre and post-silicon verification and validation, respectively. You’ll see a project dashboard with some useful widgets, a full requirement breakdown by type, stakeholder requirements MRD rolled up by status, post silicon GPU validation by test case status, and then several examples of filters that are finding gaps in my traceability. This will allow teams to help understand requirements, missing certain coverage, and help them manage risks, changes, and exceptions within the project. The project tree now contains new enriched sample data.

At the stakeholder MRD and PRD levels, you’ll see a folder breakdown helping teams store and manage things such as sustainability, regulatory, and security requirements.

The project structure reflects best practice for organizing your project data, and it includes robust traceability examples that show prospects and customers what complete traceability looks like within Jama Connect.

RELATED: Intelligent Engineering Management with Jama Connect Live Trace Explorer™

Rush: Using Live Trace Explorer™, you can open up sections of the project to see the traceability score, and you’ll see that this one has a one-hundred percent score with complete traceability.

The IP block section provides examples of several IP projects in FP64 computer core and HP M3 memory. These are derived from the system-level requirements, and they come with their own mini model and setup. You will see examples of functional and parametric requirements, detailed design examples, as well as post pre and post-silicon testing and their respective phase gates. We’re also excited to announce a new procedure guide, which you can use with these new templates. These recommend best practices and recommended steps for using Jama Connect for an integrated semiconductor systems project. You’ll see instructions for managing things like the high-level MRD from conception all the way through baseline work product. You’ll also see instructions and examples for reusing those IP blocks in another project or context.

Thank you very much. We’re excited to deliver more examples and content for the semiconductor industry with Jama Connect.

To view more Jama Connect Features in Five topics, visit:
Jama Connect Features in Five Video Series

The post Jama Connect® Features in Five: Semiconductor Solution appeared first on Jama Software.

2026 Predictions for Semiconductors: AI, Chiplets, and the Path to Sustainable Innovation

As we step into 2026, the semiconductor industry stands at the crossroads of unprecedented technological advancements and complex global challenges. From the rise of AI-driven chip design and heterogeneous integration to the growing emphasis on sustainability and geopolitical shifts, the sector is navigating a transformative era.

The next wave of innovation will be defined by breakthroughs in advanced lithography, chiplet architectures, and quantum computing, while sustainability efforts will reshape manufacturing processes to address energy efficiency, water usage, and materials recycling. At the same time, the industry faces critical hurdles, including talent shortages, supply chain realignments, and the need for robust cybersecurity measures.

In this year’s predictions series, we’ve gathered insights from leading semiconductor experts:

• Simon Bennett – Principal Solutions Consultant, AI Tech Sales
• Sarah Crary Gregory – Principal Engineer, Systems and Solutions Methodologies, Crary Labs
• Neil Stroud – General Manager Automotive and Semiconductor, Jama Software
• Steve Rush – Principal Consultant, Jama Software

Together, they explore the trends and technologies shaping the future of semiconductors. From AI-driven automation and edge computing to the challenges of regulatory shifts and the promise of chiplet-based architectures, this piece highlights the innovations and strategies that will define 2026 and beyond.

Curious about what’s happening in other fields? Read part one on consumer electronics, part two on medical device & life sciences, part three on aerospace & defense, part four on automotive, and stay tuned for our upcoming predictions for AECO.

1: Emerging Technologies

Q: What emerging technologies (e.g., advanced lithography, AI-driven chip design, quantum computing, heterogeneous integration) will have the most transformative impact on the semiconductor industry in the next five years?

Simon Bennett: In the next five years, the semiconductor industry will continue to grow, almost doubling in size from today to $1Trillion by 2030. But to sustain that growth, the industry will go through some extreme changes and challenges. The first trend to note is actually due to a declining trend as Moore’s Law continues to slow. [Editor’s note: Moore’s law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.]

Moore’s Law has driven the growth of the Semiconductor industry for many decades, but it is bumping up against the fundamental laws of physics. The economics of scaling to the next node are increasingly prohibitive and taking longer and longer to reach fruition.

Whilst keeping an eye on what is coming out of China, there will be some more mundane but equally challenging technology trends that are emerging and will become increasingly important in 2026 and beyond. These are AI driven design, and both chiplet and wafer scale designs (two opposite ends of the spectrum, but both an engineering reaction to the slowing of Moore’s Law).

Neil Stroud: Given the ever-increasing innovation around AI and its associated deployment, chip development is under continued pressure to keep up. This is applicable across all architectures, including Central Processing Units (CPUs), Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), and Neural Processing Units (NPUs). Naturally, continued optimization will happen around acceleration and emerging technologies like process node shrinks (advanced lithography), AI-driven chip design, and the chiplet approach (heterogeneous integration). Process node shrinks will contribute. However, the chiplet approach will also drive heterogeneity across architectures and nodes. All these factors will intimately impact the next generation of chip families for AI in the datacenter and at the edge.

2: Sustainability and Manufacturing Efficiency

Q: How do you see sustainability influencing semiconductor manufacturing, particularly in areas like energy efficiency, water usage, and materials recycling? What strategies will help the industry achieve greener fabrication processes?

Bennett: This is a great question, and right now, the elephant in the room. From Fabs to datacenters, the environmental impact is huge. Water consumption alone is a huge factor. Twenty years ago, visionary realtors quietly purchased acres of land close to a bountiful supply of water and close to a large data pipe. Those realtors are now wealthy, and the secret is out. Now the price of that land is at a premium. So, the investors behind the fabs and the datacenters are using government subsidies and their own funds to find alternative sources of energy and resources. Nuclear is making a comeback, driven in part by the energy demands of the datacenters. Municipal areas like Phoenix are making guarantees of plentiful water to companies to attract them to their region; that will put them in direct conflict with farmers in California.

Most of this is happening off the radar of the mainstream media, and the political arena is presented as a battle for the best jobs. The concern over the environmental impact is not yet front and center. Two events will likely happen to change this:

The AI bubble will inevitably burst. Just like in the early days of the internet, there will be market correction as reality catches up to expectation. Just like the internet bubble, this doesn’t mean that AI is not going to be a societal change; it just means the market got too overheated.

Unfortunately, there will be some kind of accident related to the overbuild of the infrastructure around Datacenters and Fabs. A dam will burst (Phoenix – see Roosevelt Dam), or a multibillion fab will be damaged by a natural disaster (see fault lines in Taiwan). These two events will raise awareness of environmental costs relating to sustainability and manufacturing efficiency.

In other words, in the next five years, we will be forced to take a pause, a breath, and truly measure the value vs the cost. This isn’t a bad thing. Our human history of technology transformations is punctuated with these pauses and resets. Usually for the better.

Steve Rush: Sustainability is hugely influential and important. Energy demand is forecasted to accelerate with new data centers and the demand for AI. Semiconductor companies need a system to help manage their sustainability requirements and, very importantly, validate them. Implementation to hit targets and balance, power, efficiency, and sustainability will be a series of trade-offs – semiconductor organizations will need a tool to trace all of this information and prove that they meet sustainability targets and goals.

Sarah Crary Gregory: While the semiconductor industry is obviously fiercely competitive, it can match that intensity with fierce collaboration on critical issues. Sustainability is probably the most prominent area where industry consortia such as the Semiconductor Climate Consortium bring companies together to tackle common problems. Initiatives to enable water reclamation, reduce emissions, and produce data quantifying the return on investment of sustainability practices will be more critical with the burden placed on these resources from the exponential expansion of AI. The semiconductor industry is highly interdependent, and nobody believes that there’s a way to get a competitive advantage by monopolizing natural resources. The way forward is through innovations that decrease resource consumption and minimize waste, and initiatives for water reclamation/”net zero” resource use will continue to be essential investments.

Stroud: I think there are two parts to this. Firstly, the environmental impact of actually building the chips in foundries. A huge amount of effort and investment has gone into sustainability in semiconductor manufacturing, including energy efficiency, water usage, and materials recycling. semiconductor manufacturing and materials. A great example of this is massive recycling of water used in fab processes, as well as optimizing processes and the associated chemicals used, including minimizing atmospheric emissions.

Secondly, there is the environmental impact related to the deployment of the device itself, as it consumes power and emits heat. Of course, the extreme example of this is the data center where huge racks of GPUs or CPUs are deployed, collectively consuming Megawatts of power to both power them and cool them. Again, huge investment is going into driving data center efficiency. One way to contribute is through chip design optimization to improve ‘performance per Watt.’ That is simply a measure of how much computing can be done for a given Watt of power. This optimization can happen through design and architecture efficiencies as well as process node shrinks. Ensuring the software stack is also developed to drive efficient use of the underlying hardware platform also has a fundamental role to play. It’s easy to see that these steps can have a profound positive impact on the environment caused by the global electronics footprint.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: How to Select the Right Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

3: AI and Automation

Q: How is AI accelerating innovation in semiconductor design, verification, testing, and manufacturing? What challenges must companies overcome to fully leverage AI-driven automation?

Bennett: Natural language and agentic AI will continue to show up across the tool chain. But expect some resistance from SOC design engineers, who, ironically, since they are at the epicenter of the AI revolution, are traditionally conservative and slow to adopt new methods. Verification is the most in need of help with AI-driven automation, since there just aren’t enough engineers on the planet to drive the verification needs of an SOC. (see salaries on Glassdoor). It’s been estimated that with the use of AI, a team of 3 expert verification engineers can do the work of 5 traditional verification engineers with limited use of AI, in 3 to 5x less time. This is a compelling message to an (open-minded – see below for a caveat) engineering VP struggling to find the resources to deliver a fully validated product on time. These engineers and the tools they use will be in high demand in the next five years.

Beyond design, AI will show up in yield and manufacturing analytics. The challenge of inventory and yield management in the era of disaggregated chiplet-based designs is magnified. It’s essential that all the chiplets deliver the yield and volume needed at the exact same time. The overall package is only as good as the weakest tile. This is an underserved opportunity within the big three EDA companies, and the packaging OEMS tend to jealously protect their homegrown investments in solving these challenges. Expect emerging startups to come forward as disruptors in this particular segment in 2026 and beyond.

Rush: Every company is looking for ways to utilize AI in their organization. AI can play an important role in managing traceability, especially from siloed systems that are isolated from one another. Agentic experiences that improve engineer productivity really are key. The main challenge that AI has in the semiconductor space, in particular, is adoption with the engineering team. AI experiences must improve engineering productivity; they must be accurate, and they cannot be an impediment to use. If AI-generated content is of questionable quality or if the AI experiences become too burdensome to use, AI initiatives risk dying on the vine.

4: Supply Chain and Geopolitical Shifts

Q: How are global supply chain realignments and geopolitical factors shaping semiconductor strategy? What can companies do to mitigate risk and ensure resilience in developing complex products on their own or with co-development partners?

Bennett: A global supply chain developed over the past thirty years has delivered $1T in cost savings. This $1T is now under serious threat as the world is a very different place compared to when this globally interconnected environment was first conceived. In the next five years, expect China to become more self-sufficient as it replicates every aspect of what it previously relied on from overseas, from EDA to IP to fab equipment. Expect to see semiconductor-based products from coffee machines to phones to servers to (even) EVs sourced almost exclusively from China with little to no reliance on anything beyond the shores of China. This will trigger protectionist measures in the US and the EU as they work to protect homegrown industries from what will become increasingly consumer appealing products from the Chinese factories.

A more optimistic view may be that the tensions ease as the US / EU recognize the need for open trade with China, and continue to see its designs realized in Chinese factories (but I’m not holding my breath). In semiconductors, companies will be most susceptible to this shift in China as they move to homegrown alternatives. As the geopolitics ramp up, the focus on Provenance in the West will become a C-suite / US Senate / EU Parliament level of attention. Knowing where every component or piece of code originates, its genealogy will become paramount. A counterforce will emerge where the information is “buried” as the realization hits that we can’t possibly trace the root of every bit of code, every nanometer of design. Companies will emerge with one of two unique value propositions: 1) we can audit your product and provide the provenance, 2) everything you use is contaminated; we are a new company, built cleanly from the ground up. Somehow, all three will survive – the traditional companies, the auditors, and the new “clean” companies. But there will be some very interesting mergers and acquisitions, mostly off the radar as these three entities re-align and learn to co-exist.

Rush: These days, you can basically count on major geopolitical news covering the semiconductor industry week in, week out. At the end of the day, co-development and partnerships are key. The semiconductor supply chain is mind-bogglingly complex. Adopting modern, more collaborative tooling is on the rise. Historically, the semiconductor industry has even been hesitant to adopt cloud-based solutions, and I’ve definitely seen a change in the last few years around this.

Stroud: Like many other segments, the semiconductor market tends to be cyclic, which leads to times of undersupply and oversupply. This is a complex problem to manage with many factors, including global supply chain realignments and geopolitical factors. Naturally, foundry capacity has a big role to play, and we seem to be in an investment phase right now with a number of fabs being built. This is a massive investment with a modern fab costing tens of billions of Dollars and taking multiple years from construction start to mass production. Communication and collaboration across the ecosystem also has a role to play, especially now that we are accelerating into the chiplet era, which can help mitigate risk and ensure resilience in developing complex products.

5: Chiplet and Heterogeneous Integration

Q: What role will chiplet architectures and heterogeneous integration play in addressing performance and scalability challenges? What technical and ecosystem hurdles must be overcome?

Bennett: Chiplets are essential to the continued growth of Semiconductors. Without chiplets, the forecast CAGR ($1T by 2030) is unreachable (basic economics of Moore’s Law). The challenges are two-fold: 1) engineering challenges around interconnecting tiles from different suppliers running at high speed and with the thermal challenges of a modern chip; and 2) coherence – the coherence of the supply chain, compliance, and verification. More specifically, the standards emerging need to be better governed (e.g., Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) for interconnect and system architectures if they aren’t going to become bottlenecks stymying growth.

6: Talent and Workforce Development

Q: With growing global demand for skilled engineers and manufacturing specialists, how can companies address the talent shortage in the semiconductor industry?

Bennett: This is where AI needs to step in and become more readily accepted within Semiconductor Engineering orgs. As stated above, studies show that a small team of AI proficient verification engineers are 5x+ more productive than a traditional team. However, the resistance comes from within – engineers are conservative, and within a traditional engineering organization, the manager / Director / VP still measure their worth by the number of engineers the corporation is willing to fund. This leads to destructive behaviors, such as a VP of Verification Engineering employing 100 RTL validation engineers to do the job that 10 Functional Verification engineers could do because “it’s too expensive to hire the functional verification engineers” – the companies that will thrive and succeed in the next five years are the ones who break down this cultural impasse.

Rush: There are a lot of talented people in the job market right now who can help fill the gap. Hopefully, semiconductor companies will look to hire talent from across industries – automotive, medical, and aerospace. There are certain challenges in getting enough skilled foreign workers to fill certain roles – I’m more concerned that there are many highly skilled, talented people out there looking for jobs!

7: Regulatory and Export Controls

Q: How do evolving export controls, trade policies, and security regulations impact semiconductor innovation and competitiveness? How can companies adapt strategically?

Bennett: They don’t impact semiconductor engineering innovation or competitiveness – in fact, they improve it. Case in point is China – as access to advanced GPUS / EDA tools was limited, they innovated, and actually improved on the technologies they didn’t have access to. Another example is where the Russian engineers working for US companies prior to the war in Ukraine were let go and went to work for Russian companies, helping boost the AI business in Russia. But where the question applies is the innovation at the corporate level. Engineering innovation can be stymied by a C-suite overly concerned about trade or political issues. The paradox is that smaller companies with less of a global or political reach could feel less compelled to avoid the risk associated with innovation.

Gregory: “Evolving” is an understatement! The volatility around export controls and trade policy in the United States right now is simply unprecedented, and 2026 looks like more of the same. Companies can strategically navigate these unsettled times by implementing systems –people, processes, and tools – that enable maximum response flexibility. Modular architectures, whether they’re chiplet-based, specific configurations of IP cores, highly modular software, or other building blocks, will enable the development and delivery of products whose configurations can be changed and modified as circumstances warrant. Variant management is a critical capability to be able to swap features in and out based on policy changes. Solid, well-governed data foundations will be critical to stay on top of the wildly shifting policy landscape.

RELATED: Engineering Governance is a Critical Business Strategy for Product, Project, and System Development Excellence

8: AI and Edge Computing Demand

Q: As demand for edge AI and high-performance computing grows, what innovations are most critical to meet performance and power efficiency goals?

Bennett: There are many ways to answer this, but I’ll focus on the chip-level design aspect. First, the interconnect, as previously described – the clean adoption of UCIe and a strong governing body to oversee its evolution (think Universal Serial Bus, or USB.) 3D packaging needs to keep up with the thermal demands of a heterogenous package – this may lead back to the engineering talent pipeline previously discussed since the engineers who have the combination of skills to analyze and design (future-proof) these packages are unique (think warping of a substrate as it reacts to thermal pressures, leading to subtle issues with the interconnect manifesting as signal integrity.)

Rush: I’ll answer this more from a – data isolation – perspective. Design and testing are really important, but more important is tracing all the way to the highest level and validation. I think responsible AI will help with efficiency here, but companies need a way to trace from the top down. In all honesty, this is a challenge for the semiconductor industry – having one single source of truth that can prove you’re hitting sustainability goals.

9: Cybersecurity and IP Protection

Q: With increasingly complex global supply chains, how can semiconductor companies protect intellectual property and secure their design-to-production ecosystems?

Bennett: Expect a lot more reference to initiatives such as Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and Engineering Bill of Materials (EBOM.) Expect the concept of a Bill of Materials (BOM) to evolve and take on more significance in the next few years. Expect the term Provenance to take on more importance. Traditional PLM companies will position themselves as the answer, but there will be significant pushback from the semiconductor industry, and rightly so – these PLM systems were never developed with semiconductors in mind. They are monolithic in nature, expecting the end user to move their data into their environments. The C-Suite will sign on, the engineers won’t. This will lead to QMS and IT organizations emerging to manually clone the data inside the PLM systems. For a while, this will seem just fine, until one or more issues come to public light, and the C-suite exec realizes they have spent a lot of money on tools and resources, and it didn’t solve the problem. Those companies that invested in a more lightweight engineer-friendly solution, providing traceability, compliance, and coherence insights without the costly overhead of monolithic tools and the resources that go along with them, will grab the attention of those who lost out. And yes, AI will play a part. A well-managed digital thread with the ability to expose itself in a controlled manner to intelligent insights will win out.

Rush: I mentioned earlier that semiconductor companies are adopting more cloud-based tooling. But they are not slacking in terms of security needs. By selecting best-in-class tools with exceptional infosec track records (like Jama Connect), they are effectively balancing speed and agility with security and not sacrificing either. They are pushing their vendors to expand their tool sets to deliver best-in-class experiences with rationale, scalable permission structures that are tightly governed. They’re looking for tools and vendors that are putting AI at the center of their vision – but need their vendors to offer closed, secure LLMs or integrations with in-hours AI systems.

Stroud: This is not a new issue! The semiconductor industry has been wrestling with intellectual property protection and securing the design-to-production ecosystem for years. The challenge is how to build enough flexibility in the ‘fixed’ silicon that, when combined with software (across all layers), is able to guard against future exploits and vulnerabilities. It’s almost impossible to build a modern chip without multiple integrated security capabilities. Also, it’s worth noting that security has to be a multidimensional approach in this age of hyperconnectivity, spanning seamlessly from cloud to edge. This is why we see an ever increasing number of emerging security standards that apply to both implementation and development processes, impacting hardware, software, and system design and deployment.

10: Future Outlook

Q: What do you see as the most important technological and market shifts that will define the semiconductor industry five to ten years from now? How can companies position for sustained leadership?

Bennett: 1) Semiconductor Technology: Chiplets, and the packages that are needed to realize their promise to alleviate the decline of Moore’s Law. 2) Companies: very different answer–the companies that will succeed in the future are those that completely obfuscate the hardware considerations from their customers—it’s all software, don’t worry about the hardware – we have taken care of that.

In summary, in some ways it’s the same old story – recognize and reward the unique engineering talent that helps differentiate your product, understand what the customer wants, and remove the barriers to growth. Sounds simple, right?

Rush: With AI, the amount of data that companies will manage is going to increase tremendously. Trying to manage that traceability is going to be extremely challenging. Jama Connect, with the new scaling improvements and AI vision, is at the forefront of the market and uniquely positioned to help semiconductor companies here.

Gregory: Agreed. AI is already reshaping the demand side of the market equation. The supply-side will evolve to support highly customized semiconductor design, even purpose-built and assembled solutions that are rapidly defined and fabricated. Edge AI and NPUs (neural processing units), along with open architectures such as RISC-V (and the RISC SW Ecosystem), will further broaden the horizons for semiconductor companies. How to be positioned for success? Again, it’s all about response flexibility. Sensing both strong and weak signals in the market and systematically building resilience into the company’s organizational practices will determine which companies emerge stronger from the challenges of the next five to ten years.

Intelligently improve your development process with Jama Connect:
Start your free 30-day trial!

The post 2026 Predictions for Semiconductors: AI, Chiplets, and the Path to Sustainable Innovation appeared first on Jama Software.

Jama Software Announces Jama Connect Solution for Semiconductors for Developing Complex Products and Systems Faster without Compromising Quality

Streamline and Accelerate Semiconductor Product Development with Jama Connect

Jama Software, the industry-leading requirements management and traceability solution provider, has released a semiconductor solution for fabless design companies, IDMs, and companies in other semiconductor industry sectors. With increased product complexity challenges and rapidly changing industry landscape, semiconductor companies are facing competitive pressures related to growth and profitability that require development speed and product quality.

Jama Connect for Semiconductors is a custom-built solution pre-configured for common use cases for rapid adoption, accompanied by a Procedure Guide that provides simple process descriptions from initial stakeholder MRD and System level PRDs through validation and verification. This framework enables semiconductor companies to create scalable, consistent, and repeatable processes for bringing innovative high-quality products to market quicker, navigating product variations, and better serving their customers.

“For semiconductor companies facing ever increasing complexity of silicon products plus the need to align software deliverables that must be available at launch, the traditional hardware-centric approach of product definition and development is no longer viable,” stated Neil Stroud, GM, Semiconductors, at Jama Software. “Without Live Traceability™ across tools and engineering disciplines and the controlled coordination it establishes, semiconductor companies will continue to experience significant rework and respins, quality impacts, increased costs, and product delays.”

With effective requirements management and Live Traceability™  of Jama Connect, semiconductor companies can easily manage new product requirements from ideation through to implementation, enhancement, and revisions — enabling them to maximize development efficiency, accelerate speed to market, and meet regulatory or audit requirements.

To learn more about how Jama Connect for Semiconductor can help accelerate product development throughout your ecosystem, download the datasheet, or click here to speak with one of our experts and book a free trial.

Media Contact:

Mario Maldari

Director, Product and Solution Marketing, Jama Software

marketing@jamasoftware.com

About Jama Software

Jama Software is focused on maximizing innovation success in multidisciplinary engineering organizations. Numerous firsts for humanity in fields such as fuel cells, electrification, space, software-defined vehicles, surgical robotics, and more all rely on Jama Connect requirements management software to minimize the risk of defects, rework, cost overruns, and recalls. Using Jama Connect, engineering organizations can now intelligently manage the development process by leveraging Live Traceability™ across best-of-breed tools to measurably improve outcomes. Our rapidly growing customer base spans the automotive, medical device, life sciences, semiconductor, aerospace & defense, industrial manufacturing, consumer electronics, financial services, and insurance industries. To learn more, visit us at jamasoftware.com.

The post Jama Software Announces Jama Connect® Solution for Semiconductors for Developing Complex Products and Systems Faster without Compromising Quality appeared first on Jama Software.

This blog is a recap of our recent webinar. To watch the entire presentation, visit “Advancing Requirements Engineering in Semiconductor.”

Evolving Requirements Engineering: A Framework for the Semiconductor Industry

Unlike other industries, the semiconductor sector has no governing standards or regulations for developing and managing requirements and product data— despite being critical components of products across nearly every regulated industry. This absence makes aligning key methods and practices a critical lever for improving quality, reducing rework, and gaining a competitive edge.

In this webinar, Sarah Gregory, Principal Consultant, Systems & Requirements at Crary Labs LLC, and Steve Rush, Principal Solutions Consultant at Jama Software, explore how voluntary alignment on requirements engineering practices can elevate your processes.

What You’ll Learn:

• The current state of requirements engineering in the semiconductor industry
• The value of selective movement to common ground
• “Common enough” methods that deliver measurable improvements
• How to use the Jama Connect^® for Semiconductor Framework and Procedure Guide

Whether you’re defining your next generation of chips or improving process maturity across design teams, this webinar will help you align, simplify, and elevate your requirements engineering practices.

WEBINAR PREVIEW BELOW, CLICK HERE FOR FULL WEBINAR

WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW BELOW

Advancing Requirements Engineering in Semiconductor

Sarah Gregory: Thanks everybody for joining us today for a discussion about requirements engineering in the semiconductor industry. After over 20 years of tackling challenges of requirements within a semiconductor company myself, it’s really great to be collaborating with the folks at Jama Software on the upcoming launch of a Jama Connect solution that’s tailored for what we do. This webinar is an introduction to that solution, kind of a soft launch of a broader set of resources that will be released in just a couple of weeks, significantly expanding Jama Software’s engagement in a sector in so many ways that’s foundational to industries overall. In this webinar, we’re going to give a brief overview of the current state of semiconductor requirements practice. We’ll talk through some challenges that are common to semiconductor, some are drawn from my own industry experience, but also from outside research publications and collaborations. These challenges may sound familiar to you too. And then we’ll also talk about the value of intentional movement towards aligning product development data practices both within your company and or any specific company, but also for semiconductor overall.

And we’re definitely seeing folks start to pick up on that. These aren’t alignments that a third party data model or a standard is mandating for you either, but practices that have a solid return on investment in your context both financially and in terms of quality and efficiency. Better alignment accelerates time to market and helps you respond effectively to change. A phrase that I found useful working in semiconductor about requirements as well as requirements engineering generally is common enough, not identical, not uniform, not standard even, but common enough practices that an organization or team can coalesce around in order to build some efficiencies in their product development practice. There are many ways to move toward alignment on common enough practices, but we’ll share just a few today and Steve will show you what they look like in practice if you were to choose to try them out using Jama Connect. Steve will also introduce the Jama Connect semiconductor framework that will be launching on December 4th the same day as a Jama Software hosted Digital Engineering Summit in San Jose. We’ll tell you a little bit more about that before we end today too.

And of course, we’re going to take some questions. We may not have time to catch them all in our short time together today, but please do put them in the Q&A. What we don’t get to today we’ll try to tackle over the next few weeks and we’ll make available in the semiconductor area of the Jama Software website. Let’s get started. A key first step in any collaborative engineering activity is to make sure that when you’re using a term, you’ve got a shared understanding of what that term means. When each of you signed up to attend today, you brought your own mental model of what we might mean by semiconductor, so let’s take just a minute to orient on that with the model that Jama Software uses describing eight different categories of companies. Now, this isn’t the only way to represent semiconductor and there are certainly different degrees of difference or commonality among these groupings, so don’t get wrapped around the picture here or those categories, it’s just to let you know that yes, semiconductor as comprehended by Jama Software is a very broad and diverse sector with different data management needs.

RELATED: Jama Connect Features in Five: Review Center for Semiconductor Development

Gregory: For example, the requirements for a semiconductor chip, for a chip design, they’re going to different than the requirements for litho and etch equipment to fab that chip. Companies in some of the boxes may also exist in other industry categories and they could be subject to standards in those industries as well, so it’s all a matter of what an individual company does that it informs what information they need to manage and how they need to manage that product data. It’s also possible for two companies or more in the same subsegment to manage their product data in very different ways and then for there to be commonalities in company practices across those lines too. It’s not in the scope of Steve’s and my discussion today to dig into these differences within the segments, much less different data management practices among them. Just know that the work that Jama Software is doing to support requirements engineering and data governance in the semiconductor industry, beginning with this initial release of the new semiconductor solution comprehends the scope.

We have eight categories, a lot of overlap, but just as important so many differences sometimes even within a single company within one of those categories. And it’s those differences, the scope and the breadth of them that is a challenge that in many ways is unique to the semiconductor industry. Several industries, automotive, medical devices, even some areas of oil and gas have prescriptive standards that govern how product data is structured, developed and managed. If you’ve been following Jama Software for a while you’ve possibly noticed a lot of resources that enable companies across those industries to deploy Jama Connect to manage their requirements conforming to those standards. Jama Connect has several predefined traceability information models or data models and specific templates that are purpose-built to accelerate the work of companies that need to meet those standards. In semiconductor, we don’t have such a standard at the point of product definition. You may have your own mental model of the information architecture at your company or at least in the part of the company where you’re working.

And if you happen to work in a standards-adjacent area, for example, your company or the part of the company that you’re in provides devices to automotive, standards that govern the automotive industry may be familiar to you at least for that part of your business. Otherwise, even within the same subsector in semiconductor, you’re going to find a lot of differences, a lot of divergence in how companies may architect their product data. In the absence of prescriptive standards that govern product information architecture a lot of that information architecture has just grown up organically. Now, when you look across semiconductor as a whole you might see some resemblance in some areas, but in others the information to be managed is quite different. No standards, no common regulations, very different products, all leads to a lot of divergence in practice, and that divergence can create drag and inefficiencies. Now, that points to one of the common traits across many companies in the semiconductor industry too.

TO WATCH THE FULL WEBINAR, VISIT:
Advancing Requirements Engineering in Semiconductor

The post [WEBINAR RECAP] Advancing Requirements Engineering in Semiconductor appeared first on Jama Software.

Jama Connect^® Features in Five: Review Center for Semiconductor Development

Discover how Jama Connect empowers seamless co-development with your partners! In this Features in Five session, Mario Maldari, Director of Product and Solution Marketing at Jama Software, showcases Jama Connect’s Review Center, a robust collaboration tool trusted by leading semiconductor clients.

You’ll discover how the Review Center empowers teams to collaboratively review, approve, and sign off on requirements, tests, and risks within Jama Connect projects.

Key highlights include:

• Version-controlled collaboration and decision tracking, allowing you to revisit who made decisions and their rationale at any time.
• The ability to invite stakeholders and reviewers, even those outside your project or organization.
• With these capabilities, Jama Connect serves as the single source of truth for all review comments and decisions.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Mario Maldari: Hello. My name is Mario Maldari, and I’m the Director of Product and Solution Marketing here at Jama Software. Today, I’ll be walking you through a collaborative feature that is widely used across our semiconductor client base, which is our Review Center.

The Review Center allows for collaborative review, approval, and sign-off on requirements, tests, and risks within your Jama Connect projects. The collaboration and decisions made as part of the review are version-controlled and recorded so that at any given time, you can go back to see who made a decision and why. Invite stakeholders and reviewers, even if they are not part of your project or organization. This enables Jama Connect to be the single source of truth for all of your review comments and decisions.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: How to Select the Right Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

Maldari: Let’s get started. After logging in to Jama Connect, I can send individual requirements and tests for review, or I can send multiple groups of requirements for review. As a moderator of a review, I will select these GPU PRD requirements and initiate a review. This opens our Review Center. I can set a date for the review. I can include related items such as test cases or other supporting documentation. I can set a formal review with unmodifiable changes and settings that my team has agreed upon, or I can conduct a peer review and choose the options I want for this particular review.

I can add users to the review and set them as reviewers or approvers. I can even include the email address of a stakeholder outside of my project or organization that I want to participate in the review. This is performed by using unlimited free reviewer licenses. Doing so helps keep all approvals and sign-offs in one centralized location, is and is always stored and versioned.

Let’s include Roger Dal, who is our IP product lead. Roger ultimately defines how the IP integrates into the SOC. He basically owns the what and the why to ensure the engineering team is building the right thing. His review and input is essential. Once I have added my participants, I can finalize the review and even add some custom instructions. Roger will get notified via email that he has been asked to review the requirements and can simply click on the link to open the project and begin his review.

Once inside Jama Connect, Roger could review the requirements, add comments, and approve or reject. He can notify users by at mentioning them in his comment. He can make comments on specific aspects of the requirement and qualify his question. This provides for a more granular and specific review, making the feedback more accurate and saving time for the moderator.

RELATED: Compliance Made Easy with Jama Connect for Automotive and Semiconductor Development

Maldari: When Roger is complete with his review, the moderator will get notified and can respond to comments and produce new revisions of the review. Once the moderator logs back into Jama Connect, he can review Raji’s comments and updates, respond, and produce a new revision, or finalize the review and close it. All comments history inversions are stored in the project.

Out-of-the-box reports are available for audits, and the review history is always accessible. All past and present reviews are in found in our Review Center. So at any given time, you can go back a year from now, two years from now, ten years from now, and see who approved the requirements, what the discussion was around the requirements, and how they evolved. As you can see, the Review Center allows for seamless collaboration for our semiconductor clients.

Ease of use and collaborative features keep users in the tool, preventing a siloed process across multiple tools. Everything is stored in one place, and it’s easy to see why decisions were made and who made them. Thank you for watching this video on our Review Center. To learn more, visit jamasoftware.com

To view more Jama Connect Features in Five topics, visit:
Jama Connect Features in Five Video Series

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