GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

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 question is actually not trivial to answer in 200 words. To summarize, I can say that we have had consistently positive experiences with all customers where we have used Polarion ALM. The sector in which the customer operates only played a subordinate role. We use Polarion ALM in almost all sectors: Medical technology, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, agriculture, automotive and many others. It is also interesting to note that in the beginning we were mostly active in the development of products, systems or software. Over time, this has changed more and more for some customers and risk management or projects for lessons learned have taken up more space. This enabled us to banish a seemingly endless number of Excel lists. Who doesn't know this problem: at first there is only one Excel list on the drive. Day by day there are more. Some with a date in the file name. Others with an employee abbreviation. In the end, nobody can tell which is the current and complete list. The really good thing about Polarion ALM is that it is extremely flexible to use and the configuration determines what the project is used for in Polarion ALM. It is customizable to my situation and not rigid.

• 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

• Requirements Management:
• Polarion ALM provides a centralized repository for capturing and managing requirements. Teams can define, organize, and link requirements to other artifacts like test cases and development tasks.
• Test Management:
• Polarion ALM facilitates end-to-end test management. Teams can create detailed test cases, manage test execution, and track test results.
• Traceability and Impact Analysis:
• Polarion ALM ensures traceability across all phases of the development lifecycle. Users can establish links between requirements, test cases, development tasks, and other artifacts. This traceability helps in impact analysis, allowing teams to understand how changes in one area may affect other parts of the project.
• Customization and Adaptability:
• Polarion ALM is highly customizable to fit the unique needs of different organizations and industries. Users can create custom workflows, define custom fields, and adapt the tool to their specific development processes.

• 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

• More robust engine as far as the actual took is concerned. There are navigation components in trace to reporting which we feel can be improved especially when dealing with cross global accessing of the tool. It slows us down a bit so it's backend driven optimization as well as some front end "clunkiness" that can be improved.
• Improve some filtering capabilities especially in creating custom reports and generally all around the ALM components of the tool.
• As of the version we have, the ability to enhance replationship types in traceability is limited.

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

There is too much at stake to go into a new system. But with everything else being promised as far as newer more innovative products, the justification to not renew is a huge risk so that is not a concern

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

Polarion ALM can be used individually and what I do with Polarion ALM is decided by my configuration. Lesson-learned, operational risk management, product, system or software development or customer management .... doesn't matter at all. I decide with my configuration what I will do with Polarion ALM. Of course, you can also use Polarion ALM out-of-the-box for your development because it comes with a large set of project templates.For this reason, I would also recommend not to just get started. A suitable consultant will show you the right templates and customize them according to your needs. Having Polarion ALM is like having a car. You know exactly how to operate the car. You've done it a thousand times before. The details are in the configuration: did I have a navigation system installed or not? Do I have a lane departure warning system or not? Do I have cruise control or not? Unlike when buying a vehicle, almost all functions are already available and can be used, usually at no extra cost. However, if something is missing, it can be obtained via the manufacturer's extension portal. Individual extensions are subject to a charge. Polarion ALM - easy to deploy and easy to use.

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

update, reindex takes to long

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

Support for customers using the full range of Polarion could be better.

Incentivized

competent trainer, good training project

Incentivized

easy to follow, efficent

Incentivized

Automated install and backup procedure ist missing

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

Polarion ALM has the best usability, extensibility and reactiv product management. The support is also very good compared to other companies. Or in other words it is closer to the customer. Codebeamer is for sure also a good ALM tool with a great feature set, but existing customers are often neglected. We will see, what PTC as the new owner of codebeamer will change at this point.

should be more flexible

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

• Many of our customers have achieved things that they could not have done without Polarion
• Possibility to make engineering enjoyable and not so documentation oriented (especially in regulated industries)
• Automatic and all the time up-to-date reporting gives savings in time
• Information reuse is typically giving benefits in resource use and time-to-market. Up to 40% reduction in time-to-market seen.
• 10-20% reduction in R&D cost is typically achievable

Incentivized