How to capture requirements with the blueprint

[Lars Böhnke]

Hi you great community! Atlassian was so great to offer all Confluence users a blueprint for capturing product requirements. But for me, there are some questions left. I guess that there is no real/wrong (as always with such a free tool like Confluence) but I would like to learn about some best practices. Questions that araised:

It's easy to use the blueprint if you define a whole new epic with stories. But whats the way when improving/adding new feature to an epic? Adding new rows to the table below the first requirements page? Creating a new requirements page and linking the same epic?

Where do you capture acceptance criteria? I find it hard that you can only copy two values from the table to JIRA. I find the priority column not that helpful since you cannot link it to the priorty field in JIRA. We capture acceptance criteria in the notes column but you cannot use the notes column as the issue body if you do not want to lose title or story. Any ideas on this?

[Annie Ioceva]

Hello Lars!

We use confluence on many projects to capture requirements and each project is different.

In regards to adding new features to an Epic - our practise is to split the new requirements into a new Epic e.g. first version of a feature, enhanced version etc.

Once an Epic has been described and stories are planned to be delivered in a Release, then we stop extending the Epic with new suggestions - because we willnever be able to deliver it. We find ths cleaner and easier to manage. In Confluence you can create a parent page to just contain all linked Epics. They will show flat in the requirements list.

In regards to Acceptance Criteria - once we split the requirements as Stories in JIRA, we start adding the details in JIRA, rather than extending the Confluence page. Because for the QAs it is easier to find the details in JIRA. The test cases are also in JIRA. There are JIRA Add-ons for managing Acceptance Criteria, but we most often use a separate field in JIRA. It may be on a second tab.

I hope this is helpful ;)

Have a nice day,

Annie