[theptip]

I think it can be useful to encourage (not require) this practice since auto-linking between Jira and GitHub/Gitlab is a nice feature. Jira can now show you what releases a given feature is deployed in, etc.

If you are in a regulated environment or selling to large enterprises you may find that having a SDLC policy of “no changes without ticket to track” is a more easily defensible control against unauthorized code changes (you’ll get asked about this in SOC2 and security questionnaires). The policy “anyone can make a change if they find a reviewer to approve” might not float.

Mandating ticket IDs can be really annoying though, for example if I want to make a few-line no-op refactor to clean up some code, I don’t want to have to create a ticket. So it’s definitely a tradeoff.