Learn How Links Explorer Can Simplify Traceability Of Issues Within Jira

Traceability is essential for effective requirement management, product development, and project management software. Without it, teams may struggle with backtracking, duplicate work, or missing tasks.

Traceability refers to the capacity to record and trace a workflow from a finished part to its corresponding entities and vice versa. Traceability applies to supply chain, software development, healthcare, and security industries.

According to A Guide to the Business Analyst's Body of Knowledge, "the goal of tracing is to ensure that requirements are linked back to a business objective."

Traceability also plays a significant role in any development lifecycle. It saves developers, business analysts, and project managers time, effort, and money by avoiding backtracking, duplicating work, or missing out on any task.

Moreover, when executed effectively, requirement traceability allows stakeholders to track project progress, estimate project deliverables, and analyze the impact of any change request.

Challenges with Jira

Jira by Atlassian has become a popular workflow engine that allows Agile teams to track issues or tasks through predefined and customized workflows.

One of the key variables that the Agile team needs to take into account is traceability. Although Jira has major features designed particularly for agile, including Scrum or Kanban, it doesn't support the following features-

1. Many product development teams reach a moment when they realize what they're creating has become so complex that performing traceability manually is no longer feasible. Tracing these issues becomes not only labor-intensive but also prone to errors. However, while your teams work in Jira, dependencies are not automatically tracked and visualized. Jira doesn't support hierarchical visualization based on relations.
2. Impact analysis becomes very complicated for projects with thousands of interdependent issues with many stakeholders involved. Tracing change requests and calculating the impact of each change on the project's overall progress is essential to avoid project failure and budget overrun.
3. Though Jira provides various reports on issue analysis, forecast & management, traceability reports are not available in Jira. These reports generate end-to-end traceability of linked issues across projects. Requirement Traceability reports can be used for documenting the full progress of the project and can save a huge amount of time during audits.

Here's How Links Explorer Is Solving These Challenges

You'll be happy to know Links Explorer addresses the above features and provides seamless traceability of issues within Jira. It is an excellent enhancement application over traditional Jira. It allows you to dynamically trace, analyze, and report the progress of linked Jira issues, Epics, and Portfolio hierarchies.

Unified Tree View

Links Explorer displays the complete hierarchy of linked Jira issues in a single space. Such unified visualization makes it easier for users to plan the best action. It keeps everyone in sync by providing information about issue status, priority, issue type, and issue link type.

Impact Analysis

Any changes done in Jira will be immediately reflected in the unified tree view of Links Explorer. The interactive Depth mode in Links Explorer helps you analyze changes' impact on other interdependent issues. Thus, it reduces potential risks and delays.

Powerful Traceability Reports

Links Explorer provides an influential requirement traceability report that can generate end-to-end traceability displaying linked issues across the project.
You can also generate reports displaying issues linked in hierarchical format or saved filters in Jira for a particular version. These reports provide detailed information on issue type, issue linked type, status, priority, issue key, and summary.

From allowing your team to visualize, track, analyze, and report the progress of linked Jira issues, Links Explorer helps to enhance the user experience.
Requirement management, product development, and project management software are essential for the successful traceability of issues within Jira. With Links Explorer, an excellent enhancement application over traditional Jira, Agile teams can dynamically trace, analyze, and report the progress of linked Jira issues, Epics, and Portfolio hierarchies.

Links Explorer's unified tree view displays the hierarchy of linked Jira issues in a single space, allowing users to plan the best course of action and keep everyone in sync. Impact analysis is made more accessible with the interactive Depth mode in Links Explorer that helps analyze changes' impact on other interdependent issues, thus reducing potential risks and delays. Furthermore, Links Explorer provides powerful requirement traceability reports that generate end-to-end traceability displaying linked issues across the project.
In this way, Links Explorer helps to improve the user experience in requirement management, product development, and project management software.