Micro Focus Agile Manager (Discontinued) vs. Polarion ALM

One scenario I believe HP Agile Manager is well suited is for a team of 5 or more developers who are releasing new features or addressing defects. Another scenario where it is beneficial is for teams of QA Automation engineers, where again, the objectives are clear. A scenario where I believe it would be less appropriate is for operations-type teams where objectives are not always clear cut, and the roles must be more reactive.

Incentivized

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.

• Agile manager is particularly good for planning out sprints in an Agile methodology
• The Task Board in AGM gives clear swim-lanes to indicate progress/status, or to gauge that of another team member.
• The Dash Board gives visibility to team members capacity and the overall team burn down.

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.

• Removing stories from a Sprint results in them being difficult to find later.
• Editing story details is slightly cumbersome.
• It's somewhat unclear how capacity fills up for stories split from prior sprints.

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

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

HP Agile Manager is beefy enough to work for bigger teams. In this way it matches closely to what is offered with Rally. One area it comes up short when compared to Rally is the apparent lack of a test management capability, where requirements can be entered then mapped to test cases. Agile Manager has some of the agile feel offered by Trello and Waffle but the added functionality that makes it more valuable for bigger teams.

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.

• It has allowed us to plan our Sprint work more effectively
• It has made it more clear how to accurately estimate certain problems
• It has given clarity over time as to the skill and work speed of team members

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