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Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer vs SpecFlow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Broadcom Agile Requirements...
Ranking in Test Management Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (6th), Test Design Automation (3rd)
SpecFlow
Ranking in Test Management Tools
21st
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Test Management Tools category, the mindshare of Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer is 3.5%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SpecFlow is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Test Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer3.5%
SpecFlow2.1%
Other94.4%
Test Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Hosney Osman - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Architect at Vodafone
Integration capabilities enhance testing and workflow automation
I rate Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer as 8 out of 10. It will be very nice if Broadcom has questions or comments related to my review and can reach me via email to clarify something. I want to be a reference for Broadcom. I don't have any information regarding the visual modeling function specifically. I'm not dealing with modeling requirements or generating optimized test cases in Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer. Broadcom takes a lot of information from us as end-users, and they provide fixes within two to five days maximum. My team has raised many enhancement requests and discussed them with Broadcom, and they are adding some of these features to the product itself. I look forward to receiving an email regarding these reviews, and I can add anything later if I forgot something, earning some points for this contribution on the website.
SD
Senior QA Automation Engineer at AMCS Group
Ensures efficient testing and validation of both business and technical requirements
In terms of improvement, SpecFlow's installation and configuration can be a bit challenging due to its flexibility as an open-source tool. While it offers a balanced flexibility, setting it up might require more effort compared to some licensed products that handle everything. However, SpecFlow is a framework, not an automation tool, so the actual automation is carried out through tools like Selenium. Despite setup complexities, the framework itself serves its purpose effectively. In future releases of SpecFlow, it would be beneficial to have some built-in methods for common actions like opening and closing browsers or implementing loops. Having predefined libraries for these functions would save automation engineers time and make the framework more user-friendly. While I'm not sure if such features already exist, they could be valuable, especially for those working on web applications. It would provide a generic and optimized solution that anyone can easily implement without worrying about performance issues.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Integration with automation is one of the reasons we started to consider moving to this tool from our original tool for implementing test modeling. ARD appears to have better integration with Selenium. It also has the ability to record scripts/flows using Selenium Builder and import them into ARD, which will then create and optimize a model based on that."
"CA ARD has some beautiful features which I haven't found anywhere else. For example, when designing or creating our test cases and doing scenarios, we are able to restrict our flows. If we take a data link between two processes, we can actually restrict it, so that, in production, if our functionality breaks down, we can restrict that and all the flows related to it will be removed from the test data set."
"Integration with TDM, test data management tool, provides the ability to generate data or use identified (preset or parametrized) test data. It allows significant expansion of test coverage and flexibility, without creating new tests and needing to maintain them."
"Helps the communication between the testing organization and the requirements group. It helps us to simplify the work. Instead of dealing with individual test cases, you're working with a model."
"In terms of meeting business challenges, it helped to shorten the dev/testing cycle by identifying requirements gaps early in the process, by having models shared within the development team, and it helped increase test coverage and reduce the number of issues experienced by clients/customers."
"One of the best features is that you can actually develop some of the business designs in the application and transfer that into scenarios if you don't go out of the detail level."
"We deliver test cases ten times faster and automate in hours vs. days or weeks."
"It reduced the effort required for test case creation, test case review, automation script generation, and maintenance of test cases and automation scripts, enabling us to reduce our QA team size by 50 percent while helping resources without programming knowledge to create automation scripts and move from manual testing to automation testing."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is unit testing...It is also an easy-to-use and user-friendly product that can easily adapt to any framework."
"SpecFlow's best feature is the ability to add additional layers to the programming."
"One of the most valuable features of SpecFlow for us is its risk identification capabilities."
"The initial setup is easy."
"SpecFlow's best feature is the ability to add additional layers to the programming."
"It helps us to write down the scenarios in Gherkin and write down the implementation of each step and scenario."
 

Cons

"I think it's already coming, but it needs more automation aspects. There is a tab for Automation, but I think it's not robust. I think that it's going to be a crucial element of the tool."
"Everything but the licensing was straightforward. The licensing is extremely complex."
"They do not have an engine to house test scripts to really pull together the testing pieces of it."
"It could be quicker to use. Because we do so many things with it, sometimes it takes a long time to create a flow."
"I think it's already coming, but more automation aspects involved with it. There is a tab for Automation, but I think it's not robust."
"A template in App Test should be created in advance. This has proven to be time consuming. The process is not fully automated, because there is a lot of manual intervention is required."
"However, the documentation is not clear regarding best practices, so that could be improved."
"It is not scalable anymore. It's not scalable because it doesn't support Kubernetes for making scalability, so I'm just going to increase memory and storage on the same machine."
"SpecFlow's installation and configuration can be a bit challenging due to its flexibility as an open-source tool."
"SpecFlow would be improved with the addition of functionality reporting, which would be really helpful for automation testing."
"I'd prefer in TFS if we could be writing test cases, not in the old classical version. We should be writing in Gherkin and then automatically have it convert that Gherkin test case into SpecFlow feature files."
"There should be more integration with the application life cycle management tools, including integration with Jira and Azure DevOps."
"SpecFlow would be improved with the addition of functionality reporting, which would be really helpful for automation testing."
"Regarding improvement, it would be good if SpecFlow could provide chain testing, which it currently doesn't allow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is less costly when compared to other tools on the market."
"This tool reduces the cost associated with test cases, automation script generation, and maintenance costs."
"The pricing model is based on how many people are using it. We have an annual license. There are not any additional costs."
"At present, Broadcom works through partners rather than dealing directly with the consumer. When there are discounts given, it's up to the partner as to whether they want to give that discount to the customer. Sometimes, the partners decide to take the discount themselves. Pricewise, I would give ARD's price a rating of three out of five."
"We were able to scale down some resources to basically self-fund our ability to purchase the tool."
"Recommendation is to go with concurrent licenses as oppose to seat license; this gives more flexibility."
"​The cost of the tool was well worth the benefit that we saw on the back-end."
"SpecFlow is open-source and free of charge."
"SpecFlow is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Transportation Company
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Media Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise21
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer?
It's not affordable; it's very expensive. It would be suitable only for large customers, and a large customer will think twice before making a deal with Broadcom.
What needs improvement with Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer?
Integration with AI is an area that needs to be improved quickly. To be clear, this relates to how to use AI to improve use cases, break down applications, and review designs, as this area needs to...
What is your primary use case for Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer?
This solution saves a lot of time in the software testing cycle because, with Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer specifically, I am doing a flowchart, and I can extract test cases and use cases t...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Grid Tools Agile Designer, CA ARD, CA Agile Requirements Designer
SpecFlow+
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams, Rabobank
Microsoft, Caterpillar, Siemens, Charles Schwab, IBM, Deloitte, Accenture, Philips, Dell, Deutsche Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer vs. SpecFlow and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,668 professionals have used our research since 2012.