Item: IBM Blueworks Live
Rating: 4
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Blueworks Live is used as a business process modeler and management platform. It is generally forced onto customers on any large project that is led by IBM, since this is their standard solution for process modelling and helps their team deploy predefined templates and practices - as well as accelerating the project time-to-market.

Pros and Cons

Out-of-the-box integration with the IBM Suite
Intuitive and easy-to-use for any business analyst
Lots of options to work with Microsoft products

Pricing is prohibitive for any non-Large Enterprise customer
User experience is very dated
Not a true BPMN2 modeler so you'll have a hard time migrating to another solution later on

Return on Investment

Improved time-to-market on IBM-led projects
Definitely not a tool we could use post-project (price, dated interface)
Dangerous decision to lock-in your processes with a non-universal format

Alternatives Considered

Camunda Platform, Lucidchart, Microsoft Visio and Signavio Process Manager

Blueworks Live was part of a project deal. We did not keep it after the project. We found there are many solutions offering similar or superior capabilities - the fact that Blueworks does not fully support the universal BPMN standard was a big letdown for us. The pricing also did not make sense as a standalone solution.

Key Insights

Do you think IBM Blueworks Live delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with IBM Blueworks Live's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM Blueworks Live live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of IBM Blueworks Live go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM Blueworks Live again?

Other Software Used

Signavio Process Intelligence, Lucidchart, Camunda Platform, Microsoft Visio

Likelihood to Recommend

It's hard to recommend a tool that does not follow the universal industry standard (BPMN2). Like Visio, it looks and feels like the standard is respected (shapes, naming convention, etc.) but Blueworks Live does not in fact follow any of it. It is a good tool for any company that is primarily looking at drawing diagrams (e.g., export them as images), as opposed to building live processes.

Great addition to the IBM suite, not worth it as a standalone

Overall Satisfaction with Blueworks Live