Polarion ALM vs. Zephyr Scale

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.

Jira and Confluence are widely implemented in organizations of various industries so incorporating Zephyr Scale is a very seamless method of adding scalable testing management. Testing visibility and end to end traceability is possible and integrates in Jira. Developers and engineers are able to take advantage of the built-in reports and statistics and even automate testing. The value is greatly reduced for organizations that do not already implement Jira and Confluence as the native integrated compatibility is much of the value

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.

• Scalable and compatible with Jira & Confluence
• Improves testing visibility, data analysis, collaboration with reports & gadgets
• Easy to retrospectively trace testing with change history

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

• Not as valuable if not already using Jira or Confluence
• Can be overlooked if the user does not set automation
• Needs better first time tutorials

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

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.

Zephyr scale is easier to work with and more seamlessly used because it is natively integrated with Jira and Confluence. TestRail cannot provide the same scalable experience and is rather dated and limited in capability. Developers rather use tools that are compatible with each other, and Zephyr scale offers that

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

• Dozens of added testing capability via integrated gadgets
• Reduced testing and tracking time
• Faster and clearer testing operations awareness

Incentivized