codeBeamer ALM vs. IBM Rational ClearQuest

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

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

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

• 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

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

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

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

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

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

It was pretty simple.

Incentivized

codeBeamer is by far better.

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

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

• 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