Requirements management in the regulated domains such as medtech, automotive or aviation has certain differences compared to the agile development. Jira Software with its easy to use backlog view and work boards suits best for managing requirements in the agile world. For the regulated domains it might be better to use Confluence in addition to Jira. In this blog post, we will describe how to use Confluence and Jira for requirements management in the regulated domains.
The main characteristic of agile development is, unsurprisingly, agility. While you are getting all ideas about and feedback to your backlog you are continuously prioritising and managing the backlog. In other words, your requirements are not fully analysed and may still change during the development phase. In the regulated domains, however, requirements need more control. Changes to requirements have to be analysed and follow a defined process of revision and approval by specific parties within the organisation. This is the reason why the requirements for the requirement management systems also differ based on the domain you are working in.
There are certain advantages of using Confluence for the requirements management in the regulated domain compared to Jira.
In Confluence:
* you can easily see the change history by using Confluence page versions diffs;
* it is easier to write requirements in. Adding images, diagrams, macros, etc and using wysiwyg editor is more user-friendly than the Jira issue editor;
* Confluence page templates help adding control over your content;
* you can add compliant doc approvals to Confluence pages with apps from Comala portfolio;
* requirements can be exported easily into different formats with different styles as needed;
* requirements are all in one place with easy to use structure. Organising and grouping requirements is simple within a Confluence space. Just drag and drop to change the structure;
* it is easy to differentiate drafts and approved documents. Keep drafts and approved documents in separate spaces with separate access permissions.
In case the above-listed aspects are important to your organisation, then you will benefit from using Confluence to manage the requirements.
For the full blog post on how to use Confluence and Jira for requirements management, please keep reading the blog post on our website.
To summarize the blog post, here are the main steps of requirements management in Confluence & Jira:
▪ Use Confluence templates to create you requirements pages in Confluence,
▪ Manage the requirements in Confluence during the analysis phase,
▪ Approve the requirements in Confluence when they are ready,
▪ Create placeholder Jira issues for release planning and tracking from approved Confluence requirement pages,
▪ Use Jira issues to implement the requirements.
| ▪ | Use Confluence templates to create you requirements pages in Confluence, |
| ▪ | Manage the requirements in Confluence during the analysis phase, |
| ▪ | Approve the requirements in Confluence when they are ready, |
| ▪ | Create placeholder Jira issues for release planning and tracking from approved Confluence requirement pages, |
| ▪ | Use Jira issues to implement the requirements. |
