July 23rd, 2026 by Kendra Stansel
As software development shifts toward autonomous workflows, keeping executive strategy aligned with technical execution has never been more important. In our recent webinar, Adam Sandman hosted a walkthrough of Spira 9.3, giving our community a sneak peek at the new Portfolio Planning beta, showcasing powerful additions to Inflectra.ai, and unveiling a major upgrade to the Spira MCP Server.
If you missed the live event, continue reading to see a recap of everything announced and demonstrated.
1. Connecting Strategy to Execution with Portfolio Planning (Public Beta)
Spira 9.3 expands multi-level planning to three distinct tiers: Product, Program, and Portfolio. While Product and Program planning have long enabled cross-team capability orchestration, the new Portfolio view brings high-level governance to executive stakeholders.
Key Portfolio Highlights:
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Strategic Outcomes: Define top-down organizational KPIs (e.g., "Increase new customer acquisition by 10%").
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Portfolio Milestones: Establish major timeline goals across quarter-end target dates.
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Multi-Level Mapping: Link program capabilities directly to strategic portfolio outcomes—and down to individual product requirements.
Note: The Portfolio Planning feature is currently in Public Beta in Spira 9.3. You can turn it on in your SpiraPlan settings today to start structuring outcomes; full roll-up calculations and progress KPIs will land in Spira 9.4.
2. Smarter Testing with Inflectra.ai: Requirements Coverage Analysis
Finding gaps in test coverage usually requires hours of manual cross-referencing. Spira 9.3 introduces the Requirements Coverage Analysis Agent in Inflectra.ai, designed to analyze the quality and depth of your test suite automatically.
How it works:
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Breaks Down Requirements: The agent splits complex requirements into logical, testable topics (e.g., UI, Backend Integration, Security).
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Evaluates Existing Tests: It checks assigned test cases and step descriptions against those topics.
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Identifies False Positives: The agent evaluates neighboring/child requirements so it won't flag covered features unnecessarily.
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Fills the Gaps: With a single click, Inflectra.ai automatically generates missing test cases complete with step-by-step instructions.
3. The Interactive Spira MCP Server: Bringing Spira to Your AI Coding Tools
One of the biggest announcements of the session was the major update to the Spira MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server.
Previously, AI tools could only read data from Spira. With the new release, the Spira MCP server transitions from read-only to fully interactive and bi-directional.
The Central Data Substrate for the Agentic SDLC
AI coding assistants like Claude Code, Kiro, Cursor, and Visual Studio Code (via Klein/Copilot) can now query and modify Spira directly.
During the live demo using AWS Kiro, we saw the AI agent:
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Identify requirements in progress that lacked test coverage.
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Create new test cases and steps directly in Spira.
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Generate formatted markdown coverage reports automatically.
By making Spira the persistent data substrate for your software factory, both human engineers and autonomous AI agents stay synchronized in real time.
What’s Next on the Horizon?
Looking ahead, the road to Spira 9.4 and beyond brings even deeper AI integration:
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Spira 9.4: Official launch of full Portfolio progress calculations and performance optimizations.
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Spira 9.5 & 9.6: Introduction of an embedded AI Chat Interface right inside Spira’s UI, utilizing an internal MCP server to let users interact with their projects conversationally.
Transform how you plan, test, and deliver software.
Don't let test gaps or disconnected spreadsheets slow down your team. Experience the power of AI-assisted test coverage, bi-directional MCP connectivity, and multi-level portfolio management with a 30-day free trial of SpiraPlan with Inflectra.ai.
