Today, technology is advancing rapidly, outpacing traditional engineering methods. This trend is driving a growing demand for smart software-driven products and a wider range of products, which leads to pressing challenges like cost and time constraints, limited resources, strict testing standards and safety and quality requirements.

The need for solutions that connect functional, software, mechanical and electrical engineering domains to a single source of truth has never been greater. These solutions aim to reduce integration failures and delivery delays, support product line variability and ensure full visibility into the lifecycle. This calls for expertise in various domains, including digital thread, global configuration management, and impact analysis.

Today, I am very excited to announce the new release of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management 7.0.3 version that builds on more than a decade of industry leadership, bringing new capabilities and efficiencies that empower engineering professionals to deliver high-quality complex systems and software on time.

Digital thread: Connecting the dots

In a rapidly evolving engineering landscape, keeping track of dependencies and relationships among various engineering data is a daunting task that cannot be correctly and efficiently managed using spreadsheets and other manual means. That’s where the traceability features in IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management 7.0.3 come into play.

The digital thread is the expression of dependencies and relationships among engineering data from all their teams and tools, which provides the data to automate engineering tasks including impact analysis, the propagation of changes, and reporting. In this release it’s easier to create links between artifacts, including among requirements, model elements, test plans, work items, and more. Even more exciting is the ability to customize requirements attributes that determine link validity status in requirement artifacts, reducing false positives and making practitioners more productive.

Configuration and change management: Streamlining the process

Having a digital thread isn’t enough. Since your engineering artifacts go through many versions, you need a versioned digital thread. Efficiently managing configurations of your engineering artifacts and changes to them in the context of larger product development is vital to streamlined engineering operations that deliver correct outcomes. This release introduces several enhancements to streamline this process.

One notable improvement is the display of resource IDs for global components, configurations and baselines in global configuration management. This enhances resource identification, simplifies management and makes it easier to comply with industry standards, such as DO-178C.

Additionally, it’s now possible to use a web browser to see and manage files under configuration management, including use of custom attributes, making it easier for non-developers to make use of document versioning to track and manage changes effectively.

Users will also benefit from the dedicated landing page and other improvements for code review, which aim to make team more productive in delivering high-quality code.

Reporting: Harnessing data for insights

In the world of systems and software engineering, data is the key. Being able to gather and utilize program-wide status information and program deliverables is crucial for informed decision-making. This release offers substantial improvements in reporting capabilities.

With the Jazz Reporting Service (JRS) and engineering insights, you can now report on Rhapsody models and files managed in the supply chain management and their traceability with requirements, tests and work items. This empowers you to gain a comprehensive view of your engineering projects and make data-driven decisions.

The new Lifecycle Query Engine relational store (LQE rs) increases data scale, reduces system resource requirements and enhances data storage efficiency. Plus, the streamlined workflow in JRS Report Builder, along with enhancements in graphical data representations, simplifies the process of generating and managing reports.

Agile engineering: Accelerating time to market

In today’s fast-paced world, agility is the name of the game. Reducing time to market, minimizing bottlenecks and accelerating the flow of work are paramount for continuous value delivery.

With IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management 7.0.3, you can plan and manage work in an agile manner. This release introduces support for SAFe V6, including templates and reports. You can filter work items in the program board and lane settings in quick planner based on states, facilitating efficient project management.

But that’s not all—IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management 7.0.3 brings improvements in user productivity, making your work faster with less overhead and fewer opportunities for error.

Learn more about IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management 7.0.3 today

There are many other additions to the feature set of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management in the 7.0.3. release to help existing and new clients accelerate their time to market. One important capability that customers already value is scalability, and this is now even stronger. For example, Engineering Test Management 7.0.3 was tested with 35 million artifacts and 10,000 components. This robust testing ensures that the platform can handle the demands of even the most extensive engineering endeavors.

Another capability that is valued by customers is Sustainability by Product Design, empowering teams to build increasingly sophisticated and smarter software systems and systems-of-systems. By enabling engineers and development teams to work smarter, systems are more sustainable as they require fewer resources to create and use fewer resources while operating.

Want to learn more about Engineering Lifecycle Management?