Atlassian Confluence vs. IBM Rational ClearQuest

I would recommend Atlassian Confluence for companies that want to have internal documentation and minimum governance processes to ensure documentation is useful and doesn't have a lot of duplicated and non-updated content. I wouldn't recommend Atlassian Confluence for companies with a low budget since this product might be a little costly (especially with add-ons).

Incentivized

If you are familiar with IBM Rational Suite products, RequisitePro will add up due to the synergy between other components. Beyond that, if your business is not structured to an adequate development methodology or lacks the degree of maturity or necessary resources, probably RequisitePro does not add much value. If you work with developers in the requirements analysis, they probably prefer to use an SVN repository.

Incentivized

• Cross product linking - If you use other Atlassian products then Atlassian Confluence is a no-brainer for your source of documentation, knowledge management etc. You can show previews of the linked asset natively E.g. showing a preview of a JIRA ticket in a Atlassian Confluence page.
• Simple editing - Though the features available may not be super complex right now, this does come with the benefit of making it easy to edit and create documents. Some documentation editors can be overwhelming, Atlassian Confluence is simple and intuitive.
• Native marketplace - If you want to install add-ons to your Atlassian Confluence space it's really easy. Admins can explore the Atlassian marketplace natively and install them to your instance in a few clicks. You can customise your Atlassian Confluence instance in many different ways using add-ons.

Incentivized

• Capability to query bugs on multiple criteria and export it to csv for triages.
• Simple and intuitive user experience and clearly planned defect life cycle
• There are other features like assigning the defect to pull request, clearly explaining defect by attaching screenshots, detailed description etc
• If you are using other IBM tools for requirements documentation, this tool integrates very well

Incentivized

• UI Design is very simplistic and basic could make use of more visually interesting colour choices, layout choices, etc.
• Under the 'Content' menu, it defaults to having a landing page for all L1 and L2 category pages. Meaning as long as the broader content category has a sub-category, it still creates a separate landing page. In my team's case, this often creates blank pages, as we only fill out the page at the lowest sub-category (L3).
• Hyperlinks are traditionally shown as blue, however, this results into very monotonously blue pages in cases where a lot of information is being linked.

Incentivized

• Performance can be an issue. Make certain the server is sized properly
• There is a large difference in capability of the Thick Client Version compared with the web based version. Make certain each job function has proper access to be able to do what is required of them.
• Learning curve is not too steep, but would suggest having someone with experience setup the repository. Highly suggest getting a contractor to assist to get the repository up and running.

Incentivized

I am confident that Atlassian can come with additional and innovative macros and functions to add value to Confluence. In 6 months, Atlassian transformed a good collaborative tools into a more comprehensive system that can help manage projects and processes, as well as "talk" with other Atlassian products like Jira. We are in fact learning more about Jira to evaluate a possible fit to complement our tool box.

Most likely as it's one of the powerful tools in the organization. We needed this tool to track all the process related documentation and also to capture signatures.

Incentivized

Great for organizing knowledge in a hierarchical format. Seamless for engineering and product teams managing software development. Helps in formatting pages effectively, reducing manual work. Tracks changes well and allows for easy rollbacks. Granular controls for who can view/edit pages. Search function is not great which needs improvement. Hire some google engineers

Incentivized

Please keep in mind that this all has to do with you you customize the user interface. It becomes very easy to house all of your requirements, but it may and can make life difficult for you if you do not think ahead of how you want the app to work and house your data

Incentivized

I do not recall having outages or applications error so far, very reliable and available.

Incentivized

We never worked against the tide while using Confluence. Everything loads considerably fast, even media components like videos (hosted on the platform or embed external videos from Youtube, for example). We are not using heavy media components a lot, but in the rare occasion we happen to use one we have no problems whatsoever.

Incentivized

This rating is specifically for Atlassian's self-help documentation on their website. Often times, it is not robust enough to cover a complex usage of one of their features. Frequently, you can find an answer on the web, but not from Atlassian. Instead, it is usually at a power user group elsewhere on the net.

Incentivized

IBM has good support and knowledge base. With the wealth of information on their site and the support desk, we were able to quickly resolve issues. It is smart to build up a COE and a group that manages the software otherwise it is quick to be able to lose the knowledge as team members are assigned different duties

Incentivized

Overall, I am very satisfied with the initial implementation (and the subsequent upgrades and implementations made over the years).

This product has never rose to the level of being an major issue at an executive level. It has quietly and valiantly done it's job for our company!

Incentivized

It was pretty simple.

Incentivized

We chose Atlassian Confluence over SharePoint because it's much more user-friendly and intuitive. Atlassian Confluence makes collaboration and knowledge sharing easier with its simpler interface and better search. While SharePoint can be powerful, it often feels clunky and complex, making it harder for our team to actually use it.

Incentivized

IBM clearquest would the BEST option if you are looking for managing change requests, managing project workflows, generating reports on status of requests. The reason being: cost, cost and cost. It almost handles everything that you would need for your project including bug tracking unless you want something really fancy (like HP QC) with a higher cost that supports a wide variety of needs which you might need to evaluate based on your project needs. For example, if you would be really making use of all those additional features provided by HP Quality Center. To be honest it depends on your project size, the skills of team members and of course budget!

Incentivized

This tool is very adaptable. So much so we use it for three completely separate projects, in three very different ways.

Incentivized

• The AI feature which lets me find relevant documents while reading one document is really beneficial.
• Centralising of knowledge systems is one of the key differentiators for large organisations.
• As long as folks keep using Google Docs and Atlassian Confluence, there is going to be a challenge in building a continuum.

Incentivized

• IBM Rational ClearQuest has provided a workflow that works without unique software methodology. As a result we deliver complete software products to our clients in a 6 to 8 week development time frame.
• As a result of our highly customized implementation, we have 8 resources supporting IBM Rational ClearQuest. Three of the resources are full time configuration management staff that administer and support the tool set and the other 5 are from the testing group that handle ClearQuest user support issues in addition to their testing duties.

Incentivized