GitLab vs. IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management

GitLab is good if you work a lot with code and do complex repository actions. It gives you a very good overview of what were the states of your branches and the files in them at different stages in time. It's also way easier and more efficient to write pipelines for CI\CD. It's easier to read and it's easier to write them. It takes fewer clicks to achieve the same things with GitLab than it does for competitor products.

Incentivized

The software is robust enough to handle highly complex software development or other product development and can be used well beyond the range to do what a client needs. However, because of the inability to hold its users to proper best practices, things can get wildly out of hand and cascade over the years, creating unnecessary technical debt. The system has a lot of usable features, but they don't funnel users toward the correct processes and practices.

Incentivized

• GitLab excels in managing code versions, allowing easy tracking of changes, branch management, and merging contributions.
• It helps maintain code stability and reliability, saving time and effort in the development or research workflow.
• Powerful code review features, enabling collaboration and feedback among team members.
• Robust project management features, including issue tracking, kanban boards, and milestones.

Incentivized

• Open Services supporting Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC).
• Required definition management and managed capabilities enabling.
• Rational DOORS Web Access for local on the test field presence.
• On-sites established reporting system.
• Approved linking requirements to test plans
• Engineering Requirements Management DOORS traces requirements thereby eliminates manually processes and spreadsheets, for improved productivity.
• Returns the investment efficiently.

Incentivized

• CI variables management is sometimes hard to use, for example, with File type variables. The scope of each variable is also hard to guess.
• Access Token: there are too many types (Personal, Project, global..), and it is hard to identify the scope and where it comes from once created.
• Runners: auto-scaled runners are for the moment hard to put in place, and monitoring is not easy.

Incentivized

• I feel like it is too heavy sometimes and updating is not very straight forward. For example, if I want to change an incident ticket (IN) to a service request (SR) and add some comment for the change, I have to first change the IN to SR, then click refresh which takes a few seconds, then add a comment. If I forget the refresh step, my comment will be discarded without warning like my ticket is not in the latest status. This also happens when somebody else changes the ticket during my edit as I can not lock the ticket exclusively.

Incentivized

I really feel the platform has matured quite faster than others, and it is always at the top of its game compared to the different vendors like GitHub, Azure pipelines, CircleCI, Travis, Jenkins. Since it provides, agents, CI/CD, repository hosting, Secrets management, user management, and Single Sign on; among other features

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

I find it easy to use, I haven't had to do the integration work, so that's why it is a 9/10, cause I can't speak to how easy that part was or the initial set up, but day to day use is great!

Incentivized

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

I've never had experienced outages from GItlab itself, but regarding the code I have deployed to Gitlab, the history helps a lot to trace the cause of the issue or performing a rollback to go back to a working version

Incentivized

GItlab reponsiveness is amazing, has never left me IDLE. I've never had issues even with complex projects. I have not experienced any issues when integrating it with agents for example or SSO

Incentivized

At this point, I do not have much experience with Gitlab support as I have never had to engage them. They have documentation that is helpful, not quite as extensive as other documentation, but helpful nonetheless. They also seem to be relatively responsive on social media platforms (twitter) and really thrived when GitHub was acquired by Microsoft

Incentivized

It does a basic job and has the potential to complete some robust reporting tasks, however, it really is a clunky piece of software with a terrible user interface that makes using it routinely quite unpleasant. Many of our legacy and maintenance projects still use DOORS but our department and company use many alternatives and are looking for better tools.

Incentivized

No problems

Incentivized

Gitlab seems more cutting-edge than GitHub; however, its AI tools are not yet as mature as those of CoPilot. It feels like the next-generation product, so as we selected a tool for our startup, we decided to invest in the disruptor in the space. While there are fewer out-of-the-box templates for Gitlab, we have never discovered a lack of feature parity.

Incentivized

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

I think is very well designed, and like any VCS it works as intended

Incentivized

• GitLab cut down our spent on container, package and infrastructure registry
• Best thing is we can now have everything in single platform which cost effective too
• Quality of support is really good and they do have emergency support team as well which is great

Incentivized

• It's part of CLM suite so it can be used to manage the whole lifecycle with tight integration with development module (Rational Team Concert) and quality module (Rational Quality Manager).
• Comprehensive reports and dashboards provide better visibility.
• License cost is on higher side.

Incentivized