codeBeamer ALM vs. IBM Rational Team Concert

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

While working on a complex project it is important all the needed change requests are handled in an effective manner, this tool helps us do exactly the same, it had great features to manage those change management tickets, making sure to merge the change with existing workflow, prioritize the requests centrally so there are no duplicates. Easy to collaborate across different teams and colleagues across the aisle.

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.

• Easy to use with well defined template and user defined fields. New team can setup a project area easily by copying an existing template and adding customized fields for their special needs.
• It can be used during almost the whole project cycle and give us a better view and control on the projects.
• Lots of built-in report functions.

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.

• IBM RTC user-interface feels very dated compared to the competition.
• Often times we find it to be very heavy and hence is slow to respond, which is sometimes discouraging to use.
• It lacks some of the main integrations we would like to see from a development standpoint like seamless Git integration for instance.

Incentivized

One of the downsides for us was the capabilities of the native build tools were lacking. The project management and work item tracking capabilities are great and I would recommend the tool to anyone. There is a definite learning curve with RTC as a source control system, and the streams are a concept unique to the product

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

There are a number of pieces to Rational Team Concert, though, with honest time working with the software, it can be easily learned while using the software on the job. While I have been an administrator for the software, and have conducted training, it is business software. It is not intended to be enjoyable as in playing a game, though it is perfectly reasonable and acceptable for the intended tasks.

Incentivized

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

As I have no issues so far with IBM Rational Team Concert I recommend the team / Employer to go with it

Incentivized

No problems

Incentivized

codeBeamer is by far better.

It was easier to do all the change management-related activities, even configurations were handled very effectively. New process definitions and initiatives made it easier for better project deliverables. Effective resource allocations and better reporting and defect management. The overall cost of the tool is great too and well within budget.

Incentivized

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

• RTC helps automate incident management workflow which improves our work efficiency. With the integration with Geneos and GSD, we can one click create RTC incident tickets from Geneos with most of the information copied from Geneos automatically and then link the details to GSD for privilege account management if needed.
• RTC provides a holistic view on ad hoc production activities. We use RTC for production management. Whoever needs to get access to production due to non-planned activities (planned change is managed in GSD) has to raise an incident ticket or service request ticket in RTC so as to get production privilege accounts.
• RTC is also being used to review and approve the usage of privilege account which help us to meet audit requirements. For example, if a user made some database change using privilege account under incident number xxx, an entry will be added in RTC and sent to account owner or production support manager to review and approve.

Incentivized