The MasterControl Quality Excellence suite bundles a number of products supporting work quality and compliance including training and exams, incidents and corrective actions (CA), documents and change, and other modules.
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Polarion ALM
Score 9.3 out of 10
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Polarion ALM is an application requirement management software platform now owned and supported by Siemens since the 2015 acquisition. It is available on the cloud (Polarion X) and on-premise. Polarion connect teams and projects to improve application development processes with
a single, unified solution for requirements, coding, testing and release.
MasterControl is very flexible in all modules. A manufacturing department and a nursing unit can both use the same modules with all their needs met. System configuration can be accomplished at a broad and or granular level. Each document, incident, user etc can have a customized configuration for its unique workflow. The application is web-based and available on a variety of platforms. Security allows staff to access what they need from the workplace, remotely from a client site to home. While I work in healthcare, I can talk to other MasterControl clients in the oil industry or Pharma and we still can provide suggestions to each other about new or unique uses for MasterControl. I
Polarion ALM shines where it is intended to be used: Application Lifecycle Management. It fits well with agile development concepts, but the extensive customization abilities allow it to adapt to other concepts, too. It is suitable as an all-in-one solution, which is capable of giving transparency over all related areas, be it Requirement Management, Test Management, Release Management, Defect Management, etc., to the involved stakeholders.
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.
Their new report writer is not user friendly yet. MasterControl has listened to its clients and have been making small changes to assist reporting. There is still room for improvement though.
Rapid company growth means many new staff. Some tech support staff know less than the customers they are supporting.
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.
During the past five years, we expanded our business and its quality control, and we hadn't had any issues even when we grew the company's size around five times. The software has proved itself during these years, and now we rely on it heavily and don't think we need to switch to any other similar product in the near future.
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
The Technical Support team has grown exponentially over the last couple years. Some front line support staff are new to the system and so know less than the clients do. Back line staff are more seasoned and provide immediate assistance to the front line staff. They have an extensive knowledge bank to assist them as well as client access to most KB articles. Annual user group conference gives us chance to meet the support staff an also to resolve any outstanding issues. Any critical vendor notices are emailed immediately when found and a patch offered at the same time. These are rare, but quickly resolved.
SharePoint and DocSTAR were reviewed as well as 6 others. None of them provided that flexibility that MasterControl did. MasterControl had all the whistles and bells other systems did, but it offered for customizations to let us include clinical ancillary services, nursing units, outpatient clinics, product manufacturing etc. All its modules are linked together so processes are streamlined and automated. The cost is more than several other systems, but it makes up for it in its customer service and flexibility. MasterControl does value its customers and does take client suggestions to new enhancements routinely. Clients routinely get together on virtual meetings to assist each other and provide suggestions to MasterControl.
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.
