Requirements in JIRA

[Kelly McLean]

Looking for some guidance on an issue we have currently within our organization. Our BA's/BSA's add requirements directly to JIRA tickets. They are not stored anywhere else. It makes updating/CR's/tracking a nightmare. I am aware of the RJ4 plug in but have also read that you can create a traceability matrix in JIRA regardless of RJ4. We currently have the following issue types in the following hierarchy:

1. Initiatives
2. Epics
3. Stories/Defects/Tasks
4. Subtasks

Here are my questions:

1. Since JIRA is not meant to be a requirement document (but we are using it as such) does RJ4 allow you to create templates within the JIRA ticket so that formatting etc is easy?
2. Is there a way to do that without RJ4? Right now BA's and BSA's put Business requirements into the Epic and then functional/tech/operations requirements into the stories. It's a HORRIBLE way to track requirements.
3. What do you currently do to maintain requirements? What system? We do not want to be hunkered down creating full BRD's but need somewhere (that is not in the tickets) to store that information without duplicating efforts?
4. How does RJ4 support change management processes?

Thanks so much for your time and consideration!

[Jarosław Solecki _Deviniti_]

@Kelly McLean 
We use our internal tool which is for both Requirement and Tests Management .

You can set different issue types which you are able to store on tree views to manage your requirements. 

Best regards, 
Jarek

[Bernhard Doleschel _Ease Solutions_]

Hello @Kelly McLean ,

I´m Bernhard from Ease Solutions, the vendor of R4J - Requirements Management for Jira.

About your questions (please feel free to send us a support request for more detailed answers, other questions or even a R4J demo):

1) Creation of documentation: R4J´s template language allow to create Word and Excel exports based on same file type. You have access to the issue content and can format it as you need for your companies style guide.

2) There are other Jira Apps outside to support structuring and exporting, may the community can give you more ideas on other solutions.

3) R4J allows you to create necessary structures without data duplication. All issues you see in R4J are real Jira issues and can be maintained in Jira and R4J.

4) R4J tracks all your changes on an issues in a revision history. This allows you to compare revision changes over time. The change process is up to you, you may link change request issues to the requirement to trace this.

For the coverage R4J offers you two different views, a two-dimensional traceability matrix (e.g. initiatives to epics) and coverage view (e.g. from initiative to epics to stories, bugs, down to subtasks).

Best Regards, Bernhard