title: What's the best way to link formal specs to JIRA enhancement requests?
body: <p>What's the best way to link formal specs to JIRA enhancement requests?</p>
  
  <p>I want to track changes to specifications using JIRA.</p>
  
  <p>Ideally, I'd like to refer to a functional ID reference in a JIRA ticket (e.g. MYAPP>APPROVAL LOGIC>MAIN SCREEN), so that program managers can retrospectively categorise defects. </p>
  
  <p>The reason for this, is so that QA scripts and documentation tickets can be searched/categorised meaningfully in the tracking system.</p>
  
  <p>There seems to be a million possible ways to do this, e.g. </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>should I write a custom component to select functional IDs from a tree?</li>
  <li>should I write the specs in confluence, or another CMS with a TrackBack facility?</li>
  <li>should I include a link to the documentation URL?</li>
  <li>should I use some other 3rd party plugin application?</li>
  <li>should I use some Atlassian application that i'm unaware of?</li>
  <li>am I using the wrong tracking tool/process to measure spec growth?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What's the best way, in your experience?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Thanks for the reply!</p>
  
  <p>There is another option that I'm considering, which is to implement the functional requirement as an actual ticket. </p>
  
  <p>This makes a lot of sense (to me at least), because a functional requirements have owners, a lifecycle, and a clear concept of sub tickets for simple enhancements etc. The ability to link issues allows it to be connected to QA activities, documentation tickets, or any other kind of work. Functional requirements also link together, so the model fits.</p>
  
  <p>The problem with this approach, is that unless you want to create every defect ticket as a sub-task to a requirement (and forgo additional subtask functionality), you have to create, and then link the ticket, using the standard 'link ticket' functionality, which isn't very quick to use. This is a high resistance workflow, which means it requires a lot of discipline. </p>
  
  <p>I'd ideally like to be able to create a ticket, that is automatically linked to another ticket, similarly to the functionality of linking a sub ticket.</p>
  
  <p>I can't be the first person to want to do this - I don't suppose you know of anyone who has tried this that you know of, or released a tool to making this easier?</p>