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IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management

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What is IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management?

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is an end-to-end engineering solution used to manage system requirements to design, workflow, and test management, extending the functionality of ALM tools for better complex-systems development.

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What is IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management?

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is an end-to-end engineering solution used to manage system requirements to design, workflow, and test management, extending the functionality of ALM tools for better complex-systems development.

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iRise offers a prototyping and design platform for software development.

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Using IBM Rational Team Concert and IBM Rational Rhapsody for Android development

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Product Details

What is IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management?

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is an end-to-end engineering solution used to manage system requirements to design, workflow, and test management, extending the functionality of ALM tools for better complex-systems development.

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Frequently Asked Questions

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is an end-to-end engineering solution used to manage system requirements to design, workflow, and test management, extending the functionality of ALM tools for better complex-systems development.

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Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 5.

The most common users of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Reviews and Ratings

(57)

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Reviews

(1-22 of 22)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Steffen Jäschke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
IBM Rational DOORS is designed to match paradigms of requirements engineering that matched the state-of-art up to lately 2011. It is still at the top of the list since many engineers have been educated with the paradigms in mind. But as can be already drawn from the name there is a mismatch in concepts that have developed bigger since. This is a package from the broader IBM Rational software suit. This emphasizes the Rational Dynamic Object Oriented Requirements System that has been extended by the DOORS eXtension Language (DLX). In the selling logic of IBM, it is superseded by IBM Jazz. For many of my customers, it is a hybrid between knowledge management and lifecycle management. It is important that it is bound against several trusted and approved engineering databases. These are sources of unmatched quality still despite contradicting facts. It is still under development and is supported by the IBM expert team. At IBM the product name is now Engineering Requirements Management DOORS. The product is cross-platform. Clients are Windows, servers are Unix. That has advantages and causes problems. The new focus in the development of the product is to be tech-savvy, enhance simplicity and overview, and grow clarity.
  • 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.
  • It is hard to conserve the achieved qualities for the experienced customers under futher technological changes.
  • The growing diverge of the product lines causes worries about the appropriateness of the software package for futures requirements policy package in software development.
  • Windows is seemingly not the best platform choice for the future. Security issues pertain and new come to the problem atop.
  • It seems more probable the IBM favors Jazz to Engineering Requirements Management DOORS due to advantages in the development process and the technologies reused from the infrastructures on which the servers will be run.
  • The advantage the Engineering Requirements Management DOORS is well established at the customers will be melted in the sun very soon and Jazz will be favored by the customers too.
  • The recognized databases will be updated to newer software platforms making a difference in manageable size and depth of knowledge at the same broadness.
  • The size of the software is already a problem for present day installations. There is no or little space to grow further. New splits and adopted packages are unavoidable.
IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS former IBM Rational DOORS profits very much from the mighty market position it had till today. It had been the most favored requirement engineering tools suite with the highest investments in the infrastructure concerning hardware, software, and knowledge sources. It was embedded in knowledge sources of test stands, hardware labs, and knowledge database servers. It allowed for some of the highest profit changes and made the fame with it. But the paradigms of requirements engineering change. If not were superseded by completely different approaches for the target solution worlds. The foremost position in the selling tables is unstable if changes are not solved or coped with by the strategist at IBM and their customers. Since the highly successful alternative suits are already at the market, and some are from IBM already the lifecycle for IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS is at the later highs. But the suite is still at the very top and very popular. There are still many problems unsolved and many wishes at the customers to make the use more comfortable and efficient at the overall level. If the time of setting up the software package is passed the adoption get more extended and complicated. There is a lot of work at the stage around and the expertise will be required for a long time from now.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used IBM Rational DOORS to manage high-level and low-level requirements as well as test procedures and the linking and traceability between them. I have used IBM Rational DOORS to run reports and wizards for export to show requirements compliance and test and requirements coverage.
  • Manage requirements
  • Manage traceability between different modules
  • Linking between the modules is very easy and can be done with different methods.
  • The DXL scripting is not as intuitive as it could be.
  • Integration with other software applications or requirements management tools is not as easy as it could be.
  • Formatting and editing could be expanded a bit more like Word.
IBM Rational DOORS is great for requirements management and traceability between different documents (called modules). It provides the opportunity to create custom reports that bring in information from several modules. One thing that it does not do well is collaboration since it locks either sections or an entire document at a time.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
DOORS is our tool of choice on large programs with a large number of requirements to manage at various levels of integration.
  • Parent to child requirement traceability
  • Auto tracking of all changes made to an object
  • Ability to create a toolkit to generate documents straight from DOORS
  • Linking between DOORS modules using DXL
  • Not web based
  • Better interface with other tools
  • Ability to track requirements approval and sell off
DOORS works well for requirements management. It's better than using MS Excel especially for a large number of requirements at different levels.
Andrea McConnell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
On my end, I mainly rely on IBM Rational Team Concert to collaborate with colleagues on projects. It has been easy to get notified when there is an amendment on development lifecycle.
  • IBM Rational Team Concert makes it easy to follow business processes.
  • Track and coordinate tasks which ease change management procedures.
  • Integrate with external applications and APIs.
  • Visualize data to streamline reporting.
  • No free trial and freemium version.
IBM Rational Team Concert is a reliable project management solution that suit our day-to-day business processes. It makes it effective to enhance data-centric decisions by visualizing data in real-time.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a business analyst, it is great to have such a comprehensive tool at our disposal. During requirement gathering, planning, documenting, and implementation phases of the project this tool really helped us a lot. It was so easy to do so many multiple tasks at ease with the help of this tool such as defining processes itself was so effective.
  • Requirement management and process definition.
  • Tracking of different artifacts within project such as defects and tickets.
  • Tracking code updates via automation.
  • Training and how to do guide can be improved to help new users.
  • Performance can be improved as there are times when it feels too slow to respond.
  • More API integration can help a lot.
While working on a complex project it is important all the needed change requests are handled in an effective manner, this tool helps us do exactly the same, it had great features to manage those change management tickets, making sure to merge the change with existing workflow, prioritize the requests centrally so there are no duplicates. Easy to collaborate across different teams and colleagues across the aisle.
Veronica Derrick | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Effective Agile management system and most powerful IBM solution with a clean easy interface to get started. Easy to configure the interface security and the ability to provide data analytics on IBM Rational Team Concert is amazing and useful to manage multiple project workflow and effective capability on access and also permission management via Cloud services.
  • Excellent project easy management.
  • Collaboration functions are very useful.
  • High quality data analytics production.
  • New user may have a difficult to to manage the platform.
  • Setting of various options is complicated.
  • Fully functionalities setting.
The easy agile management solution with the best ability to manage multiple development projects and even the data security is perfect and easy to offer great and profitable reports. Powerful tools for the easy import and data analytics generation functionalities and management of various services and data insights quick collection the product is impressive.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Rational Team Concert is a collaborative software development, process configuration, planning, software configuration, reporting etc. The main problem the software solves is making projects more accessible and sharable. It's very useful especially for engineers.
  • No set-up fee
  • Range of functionalities
  • No free trial
In that case where your company needs to configure a process, this tool will be useful. You will be able to design and program processes, as well as track and coordinate tasks. The tracking aspect is also very helpful as it enables to use data in order to identify potential issues.
Amr Saad | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My Department "Quality Department" uses IBM Rational Quality Manager as the main system that holds everything related to Quality like Test Cases, Test Plans, Test Suites, Execution Records, etc. The Application has a lot of features and helped us keep track of all testing activities conducted through different projects across the organization. We keep all of our testing artifacts on it as well.
  • Test Cases Management
  • Test Execution Management
  • Seamless Integration with IBM RTC and IBM RM
  • User Interface and User Experience needs to be Improved
  • No Defect Management
  • Integration with Automated Scripts needs to be easier
  • Some features depend on IBM RTC
IBM Rational Quality Manager is well suited to be used by the Quality Team in any Software Project. The Application provides good features to track Test Cases and Test Execution Results. On the other hand, the Application suffers from a very Old User Interface and a Very Bad overall User Experience. You have to go through very long and complicated steps to something which is not intuitive at all. Also, some features depend on having IBM RTC integrated with it.
October 16, 2020

Powerful but Clunky

Kathy Ding | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use DOORS as a requirements repository for the product and software. We use it to track, edit, and trace requirements coverage. It's used all across the business group I'm a part of amongst many roles. It is robust and large enough for all of our products both current and legacy.
  • Stores requirements
  • Compatible with HP ALM
  • Filters well and is customizable
  • Terrible UI and not intuitive
  • Too slow to connect to, launch and run
  • Scripts to use the features are way too complicated to write and maintain.
It is quite powerful and robust as a tool for all of our requirements. It is also compatible with HP ALM, our formal test management tool so that we are able to export comprehensive trace matrices for reporting purposes. However, it is a clunky, difficult, and extremely slow tool that is not well adapted to agile software development.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC) is widely used in my company globally for project planning, task management, incident management, source code control, resource projection etc. It is being used during the whole software development and implementation and post-production cycle. Our tooling team also integrates RTC with other tools, such as GSD, JIRA, Confluence etc. to help us improve work efficiency.
  • Easy to use with well defined template and user defined fields. New team can setup a project area easily by copying an existing template and adding customized fields for their special needs.
  • It can be used during almost the whole project cycle and give us a better view and control on the projects.
  • Lots of built-in report functions.
  • 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.
Well suited area in my team: Our production support team uses it for day to day incident management and problem management. Its built-in features fit the ITIL framework perfectly. Less appropriate area in my team:
We are changing our team structure to DevOps and our software development cycle from a traditional waterfall model to Agile. RTC is not as good as JIRA in Kanban and scrum.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use DOORS to manage the project requirements for one or more projects. We use the software in one department for one or two lines of service that the company offers. DOORS allows us to manage a vast amount of data with relative ease. Although the program is very powerful, it is sometimes difficult to use.
  • Allows linking of information in different parts of the program.
  • Works fairly well with other programs like Excel and Word.
  • Has a layout that is familiar, with a ribbon-like bar at the top.
  • The program can seem overwhelming because it is very complex. Maybe a beginner, intermediate and advanced mode?
  • The software has some dependencies on other software that make it easy to break at times.
  • Setting up the software was a nightmare. It has too many components, and once the connection between them is set you cannot make changes easily.
DOORS is a very specific piece of software. It is suited to managing contract/project requirements. It works well to list and connect a lot of data, and then gives you the opportunity to show these relationships in several different ways, both graphical and in reports. The software is costly, so your project needs to be large enough to support it.
Miguel Angel Merino Vega | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In the many consulting jobs that I have been doing, I have occasionally encountered companies with solid and extensive processes (necessary bureaucracy for manufacturers and factories, since they need to manage big production flows). For projects in that environment, we need extensive traceability tools, like IBM Rational DOORS.
  • Big panorama view in relation to requirements. You can have all your artifacts in one place with total traceability.
  • MS Office templates and IBM Requisite Pro compatibility.
  • IBM ways of doing things, like customizing your variables and so on.
  • Too complex for projects or businesses that don't really need the detail. It is basically overkill.
  • If you are new to IBM Rational tools, it may be a medium learning curve. You'd also need lots of training from your people, since, as usual, this tool shouldn't be managed alone.
  • It may seem old fashion compared to JIRA and the current control tools used in IT industry.
If you are using IBM software and more importantly, if you have work with huge process flows (and lots of resources invested on it), DOORS is the way to go. On the other hand, if you have mostly an IT focused agile team or your project is not too big, I can't recommend its use.
March 27, 2018

RTC Review

Puja Doshi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used by Digital Channel Technology team to manage all high-level business requirements in a centralized repository.
  • Clean GUI
  • User Friendly
  • Intuitive
  • No sorting functionality
  • No Filter Functionality
  • Difficult to manage when there are several projects on it

Well Suited: Small projects, Fewer users

Less Suited: Too many projects with a large number of business requirements

Qaiser Islam, SPC4 | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In our organization business analysts and systems analyst are using this module to develop their requirement artifacts. We have the complete IBM CLM suite so that other departments like development and QA use these requirement to develop and test the application. This end to end traceability and easy collaboration across the lifecylce help us a lot.
  • There are a couple of areas where IBM Rational DOORS is quite strong. First, it is part of the IBM CLM solution so the artifacts developed in this module can be easily available for other functions like development and QA. They can link with their stories and test cases and team leads and managers can use traceability matrix to find out where there are gaps in coverage.
  • Comprehensive configuration management functionality (concept of multiple streams and global configuration) is available, which can be helpful if you need to implement configuration management scenarios for your product or project. For example, a certain version of a requirement can be linked with one story and another version of same requirement can be linked with another story. This is the unique feature which other current tools in the market don't provide.
  • It's highly customizable so you can configure the project areas based on your need. You can have your own requirement types, and you can define templates to speed up the process. Comprehensive review functionality is there as well.
  • Wireframes are quite basic. If you need intuitive and interactive wireframes to elaborate the requirements. you probably need to define outside the tool and then upload as image.
  • ER (define data dictionaries) modeling is not there.
  • Use case modeling is quite basic. You can visualize the use case and actors relation but the tool does not enforce the rules.
  • Does not support offline work.
Very good tool for requirements management like baselining the requirements, traceability across the lifecyle, coverage matrixes, working on multiple version of requirement at a time, etc. But not up to the mark for requirement development activities like developing interactive wireframes, data modeling, BPMN, or Use case modeling. Also it does not support offline work.
Giovanni Scioti | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Rational Doors Next Generation (DNG) has been used by the application division of my customer company, and specifically by several functional analysts. The tool appears to have really specific features that allow managing artifacts like embedded documents and stores them in a central repository, and then is able to track with a strict connection the work items and codes. It shows to be a not really easy tool to use. Surely it can give really good benefits enabling the business requirements of the CR and coding activity, but to provide a consistent connection you must always work on the embedded artifact and this scenario is really not so user-friendly.

Plus if you decide to extract the artifact in a Word document after you have modified it, it is not convenient to modify the external document and then import it again because it will not override the previous one with the document versioning. It means that even if there is an import feature it is not easy to repeatedly import the same document in a different session. The graphical design features provided are not very stable. I think that it would be a better choice if the artifacts could be implemented in HTML form and not embedded as an artifact.
  • Good feature of tracking artifacts with work items
  • Interesting graphics viewer for the mapping relationship
  • Interesting concept and technical solutions for the module
  • Versioning feautures of the artifacts revision
  • Transform the artifact in HTML in form template
  • Improve the import feature, because often it crashes the procedure
  • Improve the managing of the folder structure
I think that in cases where there is a skilled functional analyst team that is well trained in the use of the tools and completely dismisses the use of Word documents to collect the requirements, it is a good fit. It seems that a good solution to improve efficiency to collect the specification is to use the module. If you need to build more accurate artifacts containing even fields and not just free text this is not possible. It would be helpful to store the specific value in metadata, and it would be interesting to compile artifacts with predefined fields that could be queried.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC) is used across our whole organization as a tool to capture a workflow of tasks to be performed per team.
  • Provides a complete workflow of work items to be performed within a team.
  • Provides customizable templates for creating and modifying the workflows based on how your team functions.
  • Provides, easy to use reports and querying functionality for managers to get a good glimpse of the overall project.
  • IBM RTC user-interface feels very dated compared to the competition.
  • Often times we find it to be very heavy and hence is slow to respond, which is sometimes discouraging to use.
  • It lacks some of the main integrations we would like to see from a development standpoint like seamless Git integration for instance.
In my opinion, RTC is probably well-suited for a very large organization that relies on it completely for project management. But it does bring in the overhead of managing and keeping it up-to-date in order to extract its benefits. It is not as good at integrating with other tools/platforms like Git for instance to enable seamless integration between developer check-ins and RTC tasks.
November 21, 2016

RTC vs alternatives

Yaron Lavi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM Rational Team Concert is used across entire RnD as source control and ALM tool.
  • One suite for all ALM needs; from requirements to code to bug and test management.
  • Handles well complex stream and merge activities.
  • Good API support, backed by a big vendor.
  • Clunky user interface and experience.
  • Hard to learn and "get around."
  • Sometimes feels you're working for it instead of the opposite.
IBM Rational Team Concert is best for all around ALM suite, maybe if migrating from Clearcase.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Rational Team Concert - RTC, is being used by a project team to facilitate software development. We define user stories, fill a backlog with epics and stories. We then prioritize and rank the backlog, and groom the stories to match our working velocity for the sprint. Rational Team Concert facilitates the requirements documentation, the sizing of the stories, and tracks our progress when used consistently.
  • Easy to use
  • Traceability
  • Generation of Reports
  • Customization to match your implementation
  • Can be self documenting and recording of history
  • Most reports and queries just display data graphically for trending. It would be nice to be able to easily build tabular reports.
  • The application is logistically complex, meaning there are many moving pieces to keep track of. One needs to work with the application learn it. Some people have trouble with this when they are new to RTC and have tight developmental time lines.
  • Running the RTC in house requires trained, dedicated staff. Upgrades are difficult and require expert level knowledge.
It is more suited to an Agile development methodology. However, it is not a replacement for or crutch to be used instead of a strong, disciplined Agile development staff. The software facilitates your existing process. It would be highly recommended to mature your Agile methodology before software acquisition. The software in a less mature environment, can allow bad habits to impact the Agile methodology discipline.
Nishad Pandarathodi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
RTC was used as an agile project management purpose for a big program which had distributed 14 agile scrum teams. Each team manages their product and sprint backlog on it. It is easy to track product, sprint burn-down charts, velocity and task board. Managed and tracked impediments, retrospective, defect, user story, Sr. scrum master (scrum coach) can track each teams status and dependency. It is easy customize the field to add in the form for creation of user story, impediment etc.
  • It a a good agile scrum project management customized web based tool
  • Easy to Track the status, charts and taking the reports
  • Managing multiple distributed scrum projects
  • Import functionality using CSV file for a list of user story etc.
It is a very good tool for agile scrum project management.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization used RTC as our comprehensive ALM tool to replace older Rational tools (ClearCase, BuildForge). It was the first tool used to provide work item tracking, which was vital as we were shifting to Agile methodologies. Rational Team Concert helped as unify the tools used across the organization while providing flexibility to different needs across business units.
  • Customizing work items is easy and flexible
  • Project Management is easy
  • Minimal administrative overhead
  • Workflows are not always intuitive
  • Native build tools not up to par
  • Source control streams concept
It is most likely well-suited for large organizations. How flexible do your ALM tools need to be? RTC is extremely flexible, but there is an associated learning curve to understand the flexibility. How quickly do we need to put the tools in place? We started with an early version of the tool (2.0), and the process to get RTC operationalized was lengthy.
Srivardhan Dingari | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The whole team uses IBM Rational Team Concert. The main focus is to write change requests which includes implementation work tickets, reviews etc.
  • Dead Lines are clearly assigned through change requests
  • Tracking the assignments (Implementation Work Tickets)
  • Process
  • GUI can be implemented much more efficiently with clarity. I personally feel the current IBM Rational Team Concert is little clumsy.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used the RTC suite to handle all aspects of our SDLC from requirements, to development and quality assurance. This was a fairly large project and RTC was hugely beneficial in helping our team complete our goals. The product is nothing short of amazing. Thanks to IBM for creating it.
  • Collaborative
  • Agile
  • Fast
  • Clunky
It's too clunky.
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