Team ticket tracking, change request tracking, defect tracking, source control management, requirements tracking, and reporting of data therein to internal and our client.
Pros
Useful for tracking very large and very complex dev/ops.
The API, while not well documented, can be integrated with other apps with highly customized work.
Flexible hosting apparatus on server, both Windows and UNIX.
Cons
Installation and upgrades are terribly complex and requires many hours of preparation.
User management in roles and permissions is archaic and inflexible.
Low-to-no automation out of the box, must be customized and done for each use case.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
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 In the selling logic of IBM, it is superseded by IBM Jazz.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.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
Manage requirements
Manage traceability between different modules
Linking between the modules is very easy and can be done with different methods.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Engineering (5001-10,000 employees)
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.
Pros
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.
Cons
No free trial and freemium version.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
Requirement management and process definition.
Tracking of different artifacts within project such as defects and tickets.
Tracking code updates via automation.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
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.
Pros
Excellent project easy management.
Collaboration functions are very useful.
High quality data analytics production.
Cons
New user may have a difficult to to manage the platform.
Setting of various options is complicated.
Fully functionalities setting.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
No set-up fee
Range of functionalities
Cons
No free trial
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Product Management (501-1000 employees)
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.
Pros
Stores requirements
Compatible with HP ALM
Filters well and is customizable
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
