How to automate inclusion of confluence design docs in Requirement traceability report on Jira

Question

If an organization is regulated, it has to pass the audit and show that it has implemented a "requirements traceability". This means it has documented the path from a specific requirement to a code change to a working product in production. At least that is how I understand it.

We need to have design docs (that live on confluence) as part of the requirement traceability report, without having to manually add them. What's the best way to get a traceability report that is inclusive of confluence docs? We have been looking at test management tools like zephyr and x-ray but those seem to only have Jira tickets in the traceability reports and none of the design docs that are linked to the epics/user stories.

Answer 1

You don't need the design documents on Confluence to live in the Jira report. The electronic traceability through the Jira and Confluence UI should be sufficient if you even need that.

Although the traceability reports may be helpful as an export, the most important traceability is between the Jira ticket (often a Story or Bug, or something similar), the test cases (which may be in a Jira plugin like Zephyr or XRay) and the changes (for software, in a version control). The traceability can be demonstrated in an audit through the web user interface of these tools.

Jira does permit linking an issue to a Confluence page (and this link is bidirectional), but I've never seen this as a requirement. The important aspect is your defined process. If your documented process states that you reference updated Confluence pages in a Jira ticket, then you will be expected to do so. However, the tools that Confluence provides around revision history and change tracking is often sufficient. Some environments may need to look into change approval plugins for Confluence to add some additional controls around reviewing and approving content.