Create requirements out of a specification document

Michał Bieńkowski

Hello,

I recently started to use Jira for requirements and tests tracking (using TestFLO). I would like to know is there a Jira app which I could use for the following "workflow":

1. I take customer specification (Statement of Work in markdown) and upload it somehow to Jira project.
2. I use Jira for collaborative review of the this document (commenting with coworkers, discussions, analysis, questions for customer, etc).
3. I select parts of the document and create a requirement in a way that anybody in the team can see that the particular part of the text was used for the particular requirement.

I envision something like code comments in GitHub (example). You can comment particular part of the document and/or create a requirement out of it.

There should be also some form of specification version tracking. So, if I create a requirement, I know in which version SOW was.

I would appreciate any guidance. Right now I feel totally lost - like a child in a fog...

What app could do that? Is Jira ok for it or should I consider Confluence or other platform?

Radoslaw Cichocki {Deviniti}

Hi @Michał Bieńkowski ,

Thank you for asking.

My name is Radek Cichocki, and I am the product manager of TestFLO. Previously I used to lead a team of certified Jira consultants who implemented various processes using the Atlassian Stack.

The workflow that you mentioned can be, mostly, implemented using Confluence.
Let me break it down for you:

1. "I take customer specification (Statement of Work in markdown) and upload it somehow to Jira project."
   
   You can create a Confluence page and either copy/paste the text of your requirement into it, or use one of Confluence's built-in importers (for example import from Word). Here's how.
   Confluence pages can have sub-pages, which can have their own sub-pages, and so on. This allows you to create a tree-like structure of requirements.
2. "I use Jira for collaborative review of the this document (commenting with coworkers, discussions, analysis, questions for customer, etc)."
   
   In fact, it would be better to move this workflow to Confluence, which already has the features you need to work on a requirement. It has two kinds of comments: inline comments, which you use to comment a specific sentence or a paragraph, and page comments, which refer to the whole page. More about it here.
   If you'd like to build a requirement approval process based on Confluence pages, so that the final version of a requirement becomes visible to a wider audience only after it gets approved, check out Comala Document Management.
   
   Also, editing the page causes Confluence to automatically increment the version of the page, which you can use to version your requirement. Moreover, you can later compare different versions of the requirement visually to easily see what's changed.
   
   
3. "I select parts of the document and create a requirement in a way that anybody in the
   team can see that the particular part of the text was used for the particular requirement."
   
   For this, you can integrate your Confluence with your Jira through something called an application link. Once this is done, you can create Jira issues from Confluence pages by selecting a piece of text in the requirement. Most likely this won't address copying the version of the page into the Jira issue, though, so you would need to add this manually either into a custom field in the Jira issue, or into the description.
   

In short, it's a good idea to use Confluence to work on the content of the requirements, including text, pictures and diagrams (e.g. Gliffy, Lucidchart), and link the page in Confluence to a Jira issue which is used to track work on the requirement, it's coverage with tests, etc.

If you'd like our consultants to implement this for you or come up with a process that's best suited for you, or even if you'd like just to get a license for any of the products mentioned above, you can contact us at atlassian@deviniti.com.

--
Regards,
Radek Cichocki