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IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management vs. Pivotal Tracker

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management

    Score5 out of 10
    N/AIBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is an integrated suite for managing requirements, engineering work, system and software models, and verification activities across complex product-development programs. It is used by systems engineers, software teams, test organizations, project managers, and compliance teams in industries such as automotive, aerospace and defense, medical devices, and public infrastructure.N/A

    Pivotal Tracker

    Score5 out of 10
    N/APivotal Tracker is a project management program primarily for software developers. It is built from the ground up to facilitate the agile development cycle, and is optimized for structuring projects in sprints, or “stories.” The solution is now owned and supported by VMware, and is part of the Pivotal / Tanzu product line up.N/A
    Pricing
    IBM Engineering Lifecycle ManagementPivotal Tracker
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM Engineering Lifecycle ManagementPivotal Tracker
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Engineering Lifecycle ManagementPivotal Tracker
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    78%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    78%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    88%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    89%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    89%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    Features
    IBM Engineering Lifecycle ManagementPivotal Tracker
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management and Pivotal Tracker
    Feature
    IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management
    -
    Ratings
    Pivotal Tracker
    6.0
    1 Ratings
    22% below category average
    Task Management00 Ratings3.01 Ratings
    Resource Management00 Ratings3.01 Ratings
    Scheduling00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Support for Agile Methodology00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Email integration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Mobile Access00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Search00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
    Agile Development
    Comparison of Agile Development features of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management and Pivotal Tracker
    Feature
    IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management
    -
    Ratings
    Pivotal Tracker
    8.0
    1 Ratings
    4% above category average
    DevOps Tool Integrations00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Velocity Calculation00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Dependencies and Blockers00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
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    User Ratings
    IBM Engineering Lifecycle ManagementPivotal Tracker
    Likelihood to Recommend
    3.0
    (22 ratings)
    8.0
    (32 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    4.0
    (5 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (9 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM Engineering Lifecycle ManagementPivotal Tracker
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    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
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    VMware by Broadcom
    The UI of the Pivotal tracker is really beautiful and amazing, which looks trivial, but we have it open all the time, so it's nice for us. In Pivotal tracker for me its very Easy to create tasks or stories anytime without facing any problems. Pivotal tracker provides us a ton of features to track the tasks and manage a team and the projects. Pivotal tracker allows for a entire team to be on the same page of the tool in regards to where is the project right now, right status of every task, what is being worked on and by whom.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    IBM
    • 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
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    VMware by Broadcom
    • It's great for tracking milestones and reporting team velocity per sprint.
    • Maintaining a prioritized backlog that is sharable with different members of your team is relatively simple.
    • There's a free version of the product for up to 3 collaborators working on 2 projects and the starting price for larger packages is relatively low.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    IBM
    • 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
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    VMware by Broadcom
    • In-story task management is still a weak point. The ability to @mention users in tasks and mark tasks as 'in-progress' would go a long way.
    • Epics do not span projects. This becomes troublesome when scaling Pivotal Tracker's agile methodology to multiple teams.
    • Splitting stories is often confusing for team members as there is no concept of a 'parent' story with child stories that have split off of it. There are only two levels: Epic & Story.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    IBM
    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
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    VMware by Broadcom
    I love the simplicity, non-configurability, and price/performance of this tool. Hands down my favorite project management tool for agile.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    IBM
    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
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    VMware by Broadcom
    It was generally easy to use once you got the hang of it. The searching and tagging of tickets was fine, commenting worked well, and release planning was good. However, it wasn't the most intuitive tool in the beginning. The UI is pretty outdated and could have used upgrades over time.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    IBM
    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
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    VMware by Broadcom
    We've never had to request support in the 5 years I have been using it. A solid solution! Everything I have had questions about is on the website. New features are in their newsletter with more details on their website. Often I am using the new features within a few minutes of reading the article.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    IBM
    No problems
    Incentivized
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    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    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
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    VMware by Broadcom
    We have had employees in the past look at Drupal, and other open source project management tools to assist in our needs. Unfortunately each solution took too much time to implement, design and configure that we could not stop the work we were doing for clients to complete a full set up of a project tracker. Thankfully Pivotal is a predefined solution with no configuration needed. Simply input your projects, design your Stories with Tasks and begin your tracking.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • 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
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    VMware by Broadcom
    • Time is money with development and a lot of things can fall through the cracks. Having a good system for making sure you're building the most relevant product for customers is really important so it was well worth it for us.
    • The process we used worked for us and it helped us streamline our development which reduced a lot of things falling through the cracks and headaches. I'm sure there are other products that can do the same job just as effectively but Pivotal Tracker worked well for us.
    Incentivized
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