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Configuring Suspect Logic

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Configuring Suspect Logic

Overview

Changes in a requirement may create a need to review linked requirements (or other types of issues) that depend on it. Requirements for Jira allows you to create a fine-grained “suspect logic” that alerts users about requirements that need review due to changes in linked requirements. The logic takes the form of project-specific rules that specify which fields are to be monitored for changes, which link types are to be examined, and the users that are to be notified when suspects are discovered.

Configuring suspect logic rules can be challenging, so a detailed example has been provided - see Example of configuring a suspect logic rule.

Configuration of Suspect Logic Rules

To configure rules for suspect logic, you need the "Suspect Configuration" user permission - see Managing User Permissions.

In the Jira main navigation bar, select Requirements > Suspect Configuration. Selecting the desired project causes the existing rules for that project (if any) to be displayed. The following actions are available:

Purpose

Action

Purpose

Action

Create rule

Select the option Add Suspect Configuration.

  • Give the rule a name.

  • Input a query to identify specific issues that may trigger the suspect mark for this configuration. If you want all issues in the project to trigger a suspect mark, please leave this field empty.

  • Select the fields you want to be monitored for changes. Choose <All fields> if you want all fields to be monitored.

To avoid being overwhelmed by links incorrectly getting marked as suspect, think carefully about which fields are selected here. Only those fields that, if changed, might necessitate changes in related requirements should be included. The requirement description is an obvious candidate, since a change in a requirement’s description may necessitate coordinated changes in related requirements. But a change in, say, the assignee of a requirement probably has no impact on related requirements.

  • Select the link types that you want to be included in the scope of the rule. Choose All Types if you want all types of links to be included in the scope.

  • Select whether the scope includes only downstream relationships (what Jira calls “outward” links), upstream relationships (“inward” links), or both.

  • Optionally, select specific users or roles that receive a notification when a requirement is marked as suspect. The possible roles are assignee, reporter, and project lead.

  • Select Add to create the rule, which takes immediate effect.

Modify rule

Select the edit icon next to the rule, modify the rule configuration as desired and select Update.

Delete rule

Select the delete icon next to rule and select Delete.

Linked Issues as trigger for suspects

There may be a need for requirements to mark newly linked issues as suspects to check its impact on requirements. When linking an existing issue or creating a new link, regardless of the scope indicated, the link between both changed and linked issue will be marked as a suspect since it is identified equally as a change for both.

The revision may also show the issue keys in the “R4J Suspect“ revision interchangeably (in the example below, ABC-123 and ABC-456) since Jira does not provide the direction which the links are created.
Example of an “R4J Suspect“ revision: R4J Suspect: Suspect set in ABC-123 due to change in ABC-456

Example of configuring a suspect logic rule

The following example describes a possible situation in requirements management, explains what we want to accomplish with a suspect logic rule, details how to configure the link type in Jira, and how to configure the suspect rule in Requirements for Jira.

Suppose we have high-level requirements and lower-level specifications of those requirements. We represent these with two issue types, Requirement and Specification. We link related Requirements and Specifications together using the link type Specification. We describe the relationship as follows:

  • Requirement A is specified by Specification B.

  • Specification B specifies Requirement A.

This leads to the following link type configuration in Jira:

Name

Outward Description

Inward Description

Name

Outward Description

Inward Description

Specification

specifies

is specified by

When a Requirement is changed we want to review the related Specification to check if any changes are needed. But a Specification can be changed without necessarily requiring a review of the related Requirement. With this in mind, we create the following suspect rule:

Option

Value

Explanation

Option

Value

Explanation

Name

review specifications of changed requirements

This is simply a name by which you can recognize the purpose of the rule.

Query

issuetype = “Requirement“

Only issues of type “Requirement” will trigger a suspect mark for the Fields and Link Types indicated in this configuration.

Fields

Description

Only changes in the Description field are of interest. If there are other fields where changes might require a review of the linked specification, they can be added here.

Link Types

Specification

The rule only applies to links of this type.

Scope

Upstream Only

Given Requirement R and Specification S, such that “R is specified by S” we select the option “Upstream Only”.

“Upstream” simply stands for the inward link description, while “downstream” stands for the outward link description.

Notification

 

This option is set to the users, if any, that are to be alerted to events that lead to a link being marked as suspect.

Information about suspect links is provided in other ways than notifications, so explicit notifications are not usually necessary - see Suspect Links.

 

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