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My team gets a pretty big corpus of requirement documents before each product... and by "pretty big" I mean roughly a hundred documents with 20-200 requirements a piece.

We're moving to Jira for work/bug/sprint tracking (Agile team) and would like to keep requirements integrated in the Jira system.

What is a good tool for this? I'm eyeing Confluence, but don't see a good way to import all the req docs and provide linkable requirement objects.

Basic needs: link to requirements from issue, change the state of a requirement, see an overview of completed/in progress/obsoleted requirements.

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  • Voting to close as a shopping question. pm.stackexchange.com/faq#questions
    – Todd A. Jacobs ♦
    Feb 12, 2013 at 20:28
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    @CodeGnome I don't think it is a shopping question. In my view, the user needs some guideance on the overall approach to take. So I would vote to open this question again as he needs to better understand how his requirements workflow should look like.
    – Sebi
    Feb 13, 2013 at 12:18
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    I would like to see the question reopened. This is a legitimate question regarding Jira use for project management, and there aren't many other sources online addressing the question.
    – akatkinson
    Sep 30, 2013 at 0:46

6 Answers 6

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We do this the other way around:

Requirements are handled in confluence (the wiki part of the atlassian suite). In Jira, for each requirement, one or more Epics/Userstories are created, but only for the next 2 or 3 milestone releases. Back linking from jira into confluence is done with a simple HTML link (confluence does autolinking if you cut and paste a URL)

After these are created, a reference to the jira issue is added to the wiki page. This link, called a gadget, will show the current issue status, and provide a direct link into jira.

Works quite nice, but it is limited in the way of having a "dashboard" overview of all requirements.

We like this setup because it keeps the backlog in jira relativly free from items which might, or might not, be tackled in the next 6 to 12 months. For us, this is good enough, maybe other tools are better, or more deeply integrated.

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Take a look at RMsis.

Key points:

  • It is built to manage large number of Requirements within JIRA ecosystem.
  • Has reasonably good capabilities in terms of JIRA Integration / linking with JIRA Issues / Traceability.
  • The Requirement states can be set and you can use filters to get an overview of the state of the project.
  • Supports versions / change control and requirement Baselines.

NOTE: I am affiliated with this product.

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  • Hi Sanjay, don't forget to include your affiliation with the product. Normally, we delete such answers, but in this case, your answer does apply to the question. I edited to show that you are indeed affiliated based on info in your profile. See our faq for more details. Thanks! :)
    – jmort253
    Jul 22, 2012 at 6:22
  • I found that on the Atlassian Marketplace a while back, but from the screenshots/description thought it looked pretty confusing. The demo on the website, though, is pretty slick. I'll give this some more investigation.
    – Hydrangea
    Jul 24, 2012 at 14:32
  • If this one is too confusing, try Requirement Yogi for Confluence - It provides the requested linkable requirement objects and is designed for non-technical people (Disclaimer: I'm the author).
    – Adrien
    Oct 9, 2014 at 12:26
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Hi Hydrangea and Hulbert,

I'm from zAgile, the creators of the open source Wikidsmart platform that handles software engineering tool / ALM integration. Wikidsmart includes pre-built solutions to handle Requirements Management, Test Case Management & Automation and more, from within Confluence and integrated with JIRA. There is an import available so that you can pull in existing requirements (for example via a CSV file) from other systems. I can connect you with customers if you want to learn more about real world, first-hand experiences too.

Here's the recorded webinar from yesterday about Requirements Management. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7mEHZ1fI5E&feature=plcp

-andrew

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Why not handle your requirements in Jira? It is easily possible if you keep in mind the following things:

  • have different card types (i.e. Jira issue types) like portfolio requirement, requirement, user story, story task, defect
  • clearly define what card type to use on which level
  • establish a governance model around, e.g. who is allowed to create a new card type
  • maybe collect all incoming requirements in a distinct project
  • link all issues so that you have tracebility
  • use versions for release planning

To give an example, imagine you want to implement a text editor. You would probably define portfolio requirements like printing support, copy & paste, desktop integration, etc. Afterwards, you could refine each of those portfolio requirements further.

Together with product management, you will decide what portfolio requirements to tackle in the next major release. So you can create versions and assign your requirements to them. Also, for requirements to be implemented next, you probably want to refine them, e.g. create user stories and link them to the parent requirement.

You can establish a governance model around your requirements, e.g. that product management must sign-off a requirement before R&D is allowed to implement them. So you can define the required states for each card type.

The big benefit of having everything in Jira is that you can do nice reporting on all aspects. Everything is linked and you got full tracebility.

(I'm currently working in a large software company, where one of our development branches is doing their complete requirements management just with Jira. Of course, they use Confluence for software specifications by linking those documents from the respective Jira cards).

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  • By "Jira cards" are you talking about the Greenhopper cards on the scrum board? I'd think importing all our requirement documents into Jira that way would be very time-consuming.
    – Hydrangea
    Feb 13, 2013 at 4:39
  • Sorry, card types was probably the wrong term. I actually mean issue types confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/… I linked this in my answer above now.
    – Sebi
    Feb 13, 2013 at 12:15
  • @Hydrangea I'm not talking about importing all your requirements documents into Jira. Where are those documents coming from? Would it be possible instead of having those documents to directly enter each single requirement into Jira? Or could you link from a Jira requirement to parts of your documents so that you have high level portfolio requirements linking to complete documents (e.g. requirement: mobile support)?
    – Sebi
    Feb 13, 2013 at 12:17
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Consider Jama Contour.

Contour has a direct integration with JIRA. This integration connects business teams responsible for product requirements and planning with development teams responsible for implementation.

Speaking to your "basic" needs, Contour can exchange information with JIRA to allow linking of the requirement to the issue. It can adjust the "state" of a requirement based on the input from JIRA. Allows for filters and reports to see requirements from different angles like status (completed/in progress/obsoleted) of requirements.

You can learn more about the integration here: http://www.jamasoftware.com/contour/jira-connector.php

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  • Shane, it sounds like you are affiliated with the product. Please identify if you are affiliated with the product or not. Otherwise, your answer will be deleted.
    – Mark Phillips
    Jul 24, 2012 at 12:49
  • We started a demo instance of Contour, but it ended up being a few times more expensive than we're able to afford right now. Plus, we'd like to keep everything in Jira.
    – Hydrangea
    Jul 24, 2012 at 14:23
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We have used Blueprint in the past. and it kept us on target in terms of budget. if that helps.

Here is the link, they specialize in requirements management

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