codeBeamer ALM vs. IBM Rational DOORS

In my opinion codeBeamer is well suited for any activity where detailed tracking is needed with teams involved. It can be less suited for small projects which do not last long, or are not continuous, etc

IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS former IBM Rational DOORS profits very much from the mighty market position it had till today. It had been the most favored requirement engineering tools suite with the highest investments in the infrastructure concerning hardware, software, and knowledge sources. It was embedded in knowledge sources of test stands, hardware labs, and knowledge database servers. It allowed for some of the highest profit changes and made the fame with it. But the paradigms of requirements engineering change. If not were superseded by completely different approaches for the target solution worlds. The foremost position in the selling tables is unstable if changes are not solved or coped with by the strategist at IBM and their customers. Since the highly successful alternative suits are already at the market, and some are from IBM already the lifecycle for IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS is at the later highs. But the suite is still at the very top and very popular. There are still many problems unsolved and many wishes at the customers to make the use more comfortable and efficient at the overall level. If the time of setting up the software package is passed the adoption get more extended and complicated. There is a lot of work at the stage around and the expertise will be required for a long time from now.

Incentivized

• Tracing of requirements.
• Tracking of development.
• Tracking of QA.
• Tracking of bugs.
• Tracking of releases.
• Wiki.
• Users and teams.
• Works for teams scattered across the globe.
• Testing and coverage for releases.
• Integration with SVN.

• Manage requirements
• Manage traceability between different modules
• Linking between the modules is very easy and can be done with different methods.

Incentivized

• Search.
• Metric calculation.
• Would be nice that cB is a source of truth, i.e., that say SVN commit is done only from cB; know this is difficult to achieve.

• Terrible UI and not intuitive
• Too slow to connect to, launch and run
• Scripts to use the features are way too complicated to write and maintain.

Incentivized

At the moment we are required by contract to continue to use the IBM DOORS software for our current client. Given that it can be expensive, if we were to use it after our current client's needs were met, we would have to secure other projects in order to justify the continued use of the software.

Incentivized

Sometimes info in codeBeamer can be lost, in principle, if not well organized by the user, info can never be found, or can be forgotten about, etc

The UI is terrible and not intuitive. Users need training in order to complete tasks. Much like SAP, it's not the clearest tool. The tracing feature is especially complicated because you must write the scripts yourself. There is a learning curve. Also, even the setup, installation, and logging in each time takes a considerable amount of time.

Incentivized

Excellent support professionally. Also, thanks for giving me for free access to SaaS cB for my hobbyist project.

Internal to our company we have several experts who have extended DOORS functionality to include some great features. And these folks are well regarded by IBM as DOORS experts in the industry.

Incentivized

codeBeamer is by far better.

Requisite Pro (and Rational Requirements Composer, it's successor) is more simple and focused on requirements. Is like a part of DOORS and can be suitable to smaller projects. IT people on the other hand prefer agile tools like JIRA. Of course if the project is big enough, DOORS is a good option to consider.

Incentivized

• Customer tracking.
• Process tracking.
• Workflow framework.
• Can be overhead.

• IBM Rational DOORS is already succeeded by different IBM toolset for the task that proved to perform highly profitable.
• Not all parts are under development. It might run out of date sooner or later by design.
• IBM Rational DOORS has most installation in truncated format so it is in need of full fledged installation for development at the customer.

Incentivized