Product management and development discuss JMP 17 and the R&D process
Hosted by product managers Dan Valente, Mia Stephens and Sam Gardner, the second day of Kickoff celebrated JMP software. It’s a product that our users love, developed by brilliant people dedicated to its continuous improvement on behalf of those users.
As Dan Valente, Sr. Manager of the Product Management team, put it: “When you use JMP every day, your life gets better.” And Dan should know. He’s been using JMP since version 4 when he needed it for an earth science project in high school.
Watch the session recording
Click to watch the Zoom recording.
Meet the Product Management team
Product Management supports the commercialization process
Product Management roles and responsibilities or, as Dan calls it, "the Product Management quilt."Product Management is the primary liaison between our customers and users and the R&D staff. We know our users well – they are scientists and researchers from many industries – and “we want to continue to put things in the product that make the workflow more efficient for them,” Dan added.
Product Management lays out the JMP roadmap, prioritizing broad value, high-impact features that “when you start using them…you never want to go back to the previous version,” explained Dan.
What Development is saying about JMP 17
First, let's meet the people on the team:
Product managers facilitated Q&A with Development leaders. Here are some of the questions covered:
What are the few tools that will have the most appeal to users and not-yet-users? What is the overarching theme of the upcoming release?
Everyone chimed in:
- Workflow Builder has the potential to affect the most users. This feature represents a doubling down on a JMP competitive advantage – that combination of interactivity and scripting for reproducibility.
- Design Space Explorer – will offer opportunities in pharma and semiconductor.
- Spectral analysis – for chemistry.
- New features to handle big, wide data.
- Improvements to measurement systems analysis.
- JMP Live overhaul of appearance, structure and reporting.
- Many enhancements for life sciences.
Are we doing anything to answer customer requests to make DOE easier in JMP?
Distinguished Research Fellow Brad Jones explained the following:
A new platform called Easy DOE provides the whole process – from defining factors to prediction – in one window with a tabbed dialog flow. JMP will offer a guided mode for new users and a flexible mode for people who know what they are doing but want an end-to-end interface. Users will also be able to save the DOE to the desktop in file format (.jmpdoe), providing a way to document work, pick up where you left off, and share it with others.
Can you update us on the progress of developing the new version of JMP Clinical separate from SAS?
“It’s probably the biggest change we’ve had over our entire life sciences career with the software,” said Distinguished Research Fellow Russ Wolfinger. “We’re already one year into the game and we’ve made a lot of progress.”
The Early Adopter of JMP Clinical will go out with EA6 (freeze is Friday, Jan. 21). Kudos to the JMP Clinical team for working to redesign the entire infrastructure.
How many JMP Genomics features will be included in JMP 17?
Development is radically changing the approach to genomics data so that users can analyze it directly in JMP Pro. It will be possible to analyze genome-wide association studies (GWAS) using existing platforms like Response Screening. It will be powerful and will require a lot of new documentation to accompany it.
What other changes will we see with JMP Live?
Brian Corcoran, Sr. R&D Director, explained that "the overall the appearance is nicer, we will have hierarchical folders to organize reports, and in more detailed fashion, we're going to have data posts, which means data becomes a first-class citizen just like a report is in JMP." And when you publish a report, you will get a JMP Live interface rather than JMP dialogs, which will get people into the JMP Live environment quicker.
How do you determine the priority of development items?
According to R&D Director Xan Gregg, "We gather a big to-do list in Jira. Each developer has a long list and compares each item against other things and reviews how easy it is to put a feature into the software." He also explained that sometimes developers must research what the customer is asking for. "For instance, they may ask for a particular stat...but maybe it makes more sense to do the whole family of stats instead of the individual one."
Are there any plans to offer a cloud-based version of JMP?
No. We are thinking of developing a web-based Distribution platform as an add-in. This is delayed due to organizational shifts. And John Sall says, "As a desktop application, we're a much more efficient user interface."
How does the separation from SAS affect the plans to connect to Viya natively?
If you have credentials for your Viya system, you'll be able to connect from JMP.
What updates will be made to the JMP interface?
A UX/UI workstream, led by UX Sr. Product Manager Bryan Fricke, will collect data on the interface through experimentation and provide guidance to the development team.
For the second half of the session, JMP staff moved to breakout rooms to discuss the product and other areas of the business. You can find notes here.
