Coverage View

Overview

The Coverage View provides an overview of all project requirements or subsets of requirements from the point of view of completeness. The view helps answer questions such as how well high-level requirements can be traced to low-level requirements, or to other types of items such as test cases, and to help identify gaps in coverage that may require attention. To navigate to the coverage view, open an R4J project and select Coverage from the R4J sidebar.

The view presents a configurable chain of linked requirements or other types of issues arranged in columns, allowing you to determine the degree to which the requirements cover the domain. The completeness of the coverage is calculated to support the determination. 

For example, you can determine if customer-level features are appropriately spelled out in technical requirements, and whether they are in turn subject to test cases.

It is important to understand that the effective use of the coverage view depends on the practices of your organization and its development process. You need to take into account how different types of requirements or other types of issues are structured, as well as how they are linked together and used. An organization might have different practices for different situations, so different coverage views can be defined and saved in the Coverage View.

The sheer number of requirements in a project may also be a challenge to understanding the coverage, so identifying significant subsets of the requirements and saving them in different views also promotes an effective solution.

Saved Coverage Views

A panel on the left of the coverage view provides a list of saved views and context menu operations to manage the views. The list provides 3 fixed containers: The Project, Private Views, and Public Views.

  • The project name is a fixed container which does not support any context menu operations.

  • Private Views and Public Views are fixed containers that determine the saved view’s accessibility. Views under Private Views will only be accessible to the person who created it. While views under Public Views are accessible to everyone who has access to the Jira project.

Context Menu Operations

Availability



View Container

Saved View

Configure view

Configure a new coverage view.

New coverage views are saved as a private view by default.

Sort by name

Sort the saved views under the container by name ascending or descending.

Copy link address

Copy the link address of the saved view to clipboard.

Delete

Delete the saved view.

Drag and Drop Operations

The saved coverage views support the following drag and drop operations:

  • Change the position of the saved view

  • Move private views to public views

  • Move owned public views to private views

Coverage View Operations

To open a view, select its name from the list of saved views. The right-side displays the requirements based on the selected saved view’s configuration, arranged in columns. Linked requirements are generally positioned adjacent to each other in the columns (though it is possible for them to be non-adjacent).

The view is initially empty. You can either select a saved view or click on Configure View to create a new view.

Purpose

Operation

Purpose

Operation

Save a new coverage view

Select Configure View. After creating column configurations, click on Save as and input a valid coverage view name.

To save from an existing saved coverage view, first select a saved view, then click on Save as and input a valid coverage view name.

Save/discard changes made on saved view

Select a saved view. After making changes to any coverage view column configuration, an indicator that the view has been Edited and options to Save or Discard changes will show at the right side of the coverage view name.

Rename a coverage view

Click on the coverage view’s name to trigger an inline edit. Input a new coverage name then save or cancel the changes. Clicking outside the input field will automatically save changes.

Select items for new view

If you do not select a saved view, you first select the requirements that form the leftmost column of the view. This column is the starting point for the coverage and generally contains the highest level requirements in the project.

First select Configure View, then fill in the required information in the Configure View dialog. The Label is the name to use in the column heading.

The requirements are selected in one of three ways, depending on the option chosen for Source:

  • Issues Types: Select the Projects and Issue Types to be used.

  • Filter: Select an existing saved filter containing a Jira query.

  • JQL: Specify a query in the Jira Query Language.

  • Tree: Select a Tree Folder to be used.

Add columns

Additional columns are added to display requirements with links to requirements in a different column (generally the column to the immediate left of the new column). Additional columns usually contain more specific levels of requirements.

First select Add Coverage Level, then fill in the required information in the Add Coverage Level dialog. The information is the same as in the Configure View dialog, except for the following additional options:

  • Column Basis: The column whose issues are to be used as the target of links for requirements in the new column. By default, the column immediately to the left of the new column is selected.

  • Link Types: Only requirements with links to issues in the previous column of the specified types are included in the column.

Update column

Hover on the column header and select the pencil icon to modify the column configuration.

Remove column

The rightmost column in the coverage view can be removed by hovering on the column header and selecting the Remove Column icon.

Open issue in Jira issue detail dialog

Click on an issue key to show the issue details in the Jira issue detail dialog.

Create a new linked issue

Hover on the cell, click on the ellipsis (…) icon, and select Create linked issue to open a dialog where you choose the link type and then proceed to create the new issue.

Unlink an issue

Hover on the cell, click on the ellipsis (…) icon, and select Remove issue link to open a dialog where you can choose to proceed with unlinking.

Refresh display

Select Refresh to display the latest state of the requirements.

Clear configuration

Select Clear All to return to an empty view.

Export

Select Export to export the coverage table to excel.

Display fields

Select Display Fields to customize the values to be displayed on the cells.

The fields displayed by default are Summary, Key, Issue Type, Status, Priority, Link Relation and Coverage Statistics. The details displayed in the each cell can be configured in the Display Fields menu. The configuration is maintained when you save a view.

Display complete field value 

Hover on a truncated field value to display the complete value.

Formula for coverage completeness percentage

given a = number of rows in previous column b = number of issues not covered (a - b) / a * 100

Known issues