IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs OpenText Software Delivery Management comparison

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. OpenText Software Delivery Management

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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

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

13th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

OpenText Software Delivery ...

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 3.9%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Software Delivery Management is 5.0%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
OpenText Software Delivery Management	5.0%
IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)	3.9%
Other	91.1%

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Featured Reviews

Juergen Albrecht

Managing Director at CCC Systems Engineering Suisse GmbH

Combining tools for effective data analysis while customization and integration need improvement

The most valuable feature is how IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) allows me to present to the customer what the actual software, even hardware, will do. It helps them gain an impression of the complexity of the functionality and find an easier way to decide whether to implement it. A picture says more than one thousand words, which is why I work with the combination of ELM and the specification of DOORS. The automation capabilities I built use column-based scripts for analysis to search, fetch, and transfer information. When I open modules, it automatically analyzes the changes since the last opening by me.

Read full review

GeorgNauerz

Managing Partner at Georg Nauerz Consulting

A stable tool for sprint planning, test management, quality management, and automated testing

I think the area of release management in the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required. In general, the connection between releases and scrum teams needs improvement, as it could be optimized owing to its linkages, making it very uncomfortable as soon as you have strong teams or scrum teams that work with different items over several releases. In future product releases, the solution needs to focus a bit more on the metric part. The product's dashboard is a metric for productivity and process control.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the reporting of the CPU usage on the dashboard."

"The integration with Git works well."

"One of the key advantages of IBM Rational ALM is its workflow capabilities, which enable seamless collaboration between development and production teams and ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the progress and readiness of the solution. Additionally, the solution is good for integration."

"The cataloging is a very valuable feature. For a lot of enterprises, they end up not knowing which applications do specific features. The cataloging helps with this. It's not that verbose, but it still gives you allowances to put in more detail."

"At the same time, if you're working from the architect or the designing team you, it's quite easy to manage the resources online."

"The tools for requirement capture we have found very useful."

"It is relatively easy to use and user-friendly once the setup is complete."

"You can customize the board according to your needs."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) pros

"It's more streamlined because we have it all under one umbrella. And once the business requirements and rules have been created, we can do test cases and apply them to the business rules."

"The most valuable feature of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the reports. We are able to do customization."

"People really how easy it is to customize. In some previous tools, that has been very limited, or you had to know how to write code to do some of the customizations, or it was very confusing. Going back to the user interface, they've made the customization of the tool, the workspace settings, very easy for people to figure out and use."

"We like Micro Focus ALM Octane because its performance is okay, and its stability is okay, so we use it a lot. The platform is easy to use."

"The integration points are very good. Octane gives us a window not only into our manual testing, but also our automation testing and our performance testing. We can see all results from all three streams of testing in one place."

"Octane works well with the Jira portfolio to track the project with two methods: Agile and Waterfall. We can track all the testing in Waterfall or Agile and synchronize it with Agile tools."

"The integration capability of ALM Octane was very straightforward. We had a supporting team, and they provided us with detailed documentation."

"It is a very scalable solution."

More OpenText Software Delivery Management pros

Cons

"I think nowadays people are getting into Jira and other tools. What is happening is, this solution is becoming more traditional, whereas Jira and other tools are more attractive for the new users to learn and start using because of the graphical interfaces."

"The solution can improve in the development area and the customized applications."

"One of the complaints from users is that they have to click buttons too many times for just a simple task. Changing this would lead to a better user experience."

"The interconnectivity between packages is a major support problem and can be improved."

"The GUI is a little bit outdated."

"The directory designer manager is uncivil. The design manager is clearly really unstable."

"The product must be more user-friendly."

"I would like to see better reporting features. The out-of-box reporting is - I don't want to say limited - but the focus is on the Scrum and Sprint reports. We need more reporting features regarding the history of the work, tracking it more deeply."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) cons

"The solution should improve by adding scrum board-like functionality."

"Improvements could be made by way of additional integrations across the lifecycle."

"The Requirements Module could be better, to build up a better requirements process. There's a huge improvement from ALM.NET to Octane, but it's still not really facilitating all the needs of the product owners, to set up their requirements in Octane."

"The biggest problem with ALM Octane is that it's very complex, so it's difficult to use and scale."

"Updating items, sorting, bulk updates—these things could have a bit more flexibility, but it's still possible to do them."

"Promoting it more could help a lot of projects."

"It could use just some small improvements. I would like additional features, like planning features, user story mapping, or connection to collaboration tools."

"Because JIRA is a leading tool for both development and requirements management - everybody is using JIRA - I'm pretty there will be a use case where people are trying to connect between ALM Octane and JIRA. The back-end configuration of the synchronization with JIRA could be simplified. The architecture is really complicated. We required a lot of machines to build the cluster and the configuration was not really clearly described within the documentation. This may have something to do with the fact that the software is pretty new."

More OpenText Software Delivery Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a contract, but I am not aware of the details."

"This product is a little expensive and we had to pay extra to have them set it up for us."

"IBM Rational ALM has both monthly and yearly licensing options."

"The price of the solution could be reduced. Many of our customers are not using all the features and this could be why our clients feel the price is too high."

"The solution is not cheap."

"The price of Micro Focus ALM Octane is too high compared to other solutions."

"ALM Octane is very expensive."

"I would say that it is an affordable product. There is an annual service fee, which is one of the additional payments to be made apart from the standard licensing costs attached to the solution."

"In my opinion, it's good value for the price that you pay."

"There is a conversion fee for changing licenses."

"It's pretty pricey, one of the most expensive ones on the market... The value depends on if you use all the features that it has. It comes with a lot of features. The difference between the license structure of ALM and Octane versus JIRA, is that you get everything with ALM and Octane... For JIRA, you buy the pieces one piece at a time."

"Microsoft is a big challenge for Micro Focus when it comes to pricing because they are much cheaper. But it definitely depends on the complexity of the environment. If it has multiple technologies, at that point, looking at other options and Microsoft would be a feasible approach."

"For what it does, it's very reasonably priced. I like the licensing model as well, because it's very flexible. You can scale licenses up and down for short periods of time."

More OpenText Software Delivery Management pricing and cost advice

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868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

23%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

12%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

24%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	32

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational ALM?

The solution is customizable.

What needs improvement with IBM Rational ALM?

Improvement is needed in bridging DNG and Rhapsody and vice versa for better data exchange from both sides with some trigger technologies. This would provide a visual reminder of changes in a modul...

What is your primary use case for IBM Rational ALM?

Most of my primary use cases involve the combination of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) ( /products/ibm-engineering-lifecycle-management-elm-reviews ) and DOORS, including both Classic D...

Is Jira better or would you go with Micro Focus ALM Octane?

Hi Netanya, Basically , it all depends on the use cases for your environment and the business needs. Hope the below data may be relevant to you for identifying your needs and deciding on the approp...

What do you like most about Micro Focus ALM Octane?

The platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus ALM Octane?

OpenText ALM Octane is an expensive product. However, it offsets costs by saving time and money, thus creating a balance between expenses and benefits. Our organization with over 1500 users sees sa...

Jira vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Comparisons

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Polarion ALM vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 10% of the time

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Jira vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Compared 40% of the time

OpenText Application Quality Management vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Compared 7% of the time

Rally Software vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Compared 6% of the time

Codebeamer vs OpenText Software Delivery Management

Compared 2% of the time

More OpenText Software Delivery Management Competitors

Product Reports

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Download IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) product report

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) report

OpenText Software Delivery Management

Download OpenText Software Delivery Management product report

OpenText Software Delivery Management report

Also Known As

IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS

Micro Focus ALM Octane, Micro Focus Octane

Overview

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management stands out for its robust Agile Scrum planning, lifecycle traceability, and tool management, offering cloud-based configurability and strong collaboration features.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management provides rich capabilities for Agile project management, facilitating requirements and test management, configuration management, and version control. Its integration with IBM Doors supports comprehensive requirements handling, and the cloud-based platform enhances collaborative efficiency across teams. Despite needing advances in user-friendliness and reporting, ELM's global configuration and compliance features make it invaluable in demanding environments.

What are the key features of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management?

Scrum-based planning: Supports Agile methodologies with rich planning tools.
Lifecycle traceability: Offers complete traceability across development stages.
Customizable workflows: Adaptable workflows with Kanban for flexibility.
Git integration: Supports efficient version control and collaboration.
Global Configuration: Manages complex configurations globally.
Compliance and reporting: Ensures robust auditing and comprehensive reporting capabilities.

What benefits should be evaluated in reviews?

Collaboration: Enhanced sharing across platforms for seamless teamwork.
Cost-effectiveness: Delivers efficient tools that optimize project spend.
Comprehensive requirement handling: Facilitates detailed requirement management through IBM Doors integration.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management is vital in sectors like automotive and manufacturing, where it implements Agile frameworks to manage requirements, conduct testing, and handle defects. It integrates into development pipelines ensuring live traceability and visibility, supporting critical engineering processes efficiently.

IBM

OpenText Software Delivery Management provides application lifecycle management with Agile and Waterfall support. It features intuitive interfaces, CI/CD integration, automated testing, and robust reporting, improving project management efficiency and usability.

Designed to enhance teams' productivity and streamline processes, OpenText Software Delivery Management integrates seamlessly with Agile methodologies. Its comprehensive backlog and requirements management, user stories, and test management make it a complete tool for managing the development lifecycle. The platform aligns with DevOps, providing traceability and extensive customization options. Traceability from requirements to deployments is enhanced, making it easier for teams to track progress. It offers integration with popular tools like Jenkins and JIRA, ensuring a unified approach to continuous delivery and testing management.

What key features does OpenText Software Delivery Management include?

Versatile across browsers with consistent performance.
Seamless CI/CD integration for smooth development processes.
Intuitive interface aiding in efficiency and ease of use.
Comprehensive backlog management ensures organized prioritization.
Automated testing aligns with Agile and DevOps principles.

What benefits can users expect when evaluating OpenText Software Delivery Management?

Enhanced traceability from inception to delivery.
Improved project management efficiency through streamlined processes.
Robust reporting capabilities offering detailed insights.
Increased flexibility in customization enabling tailored experiences.
Predictive analytics for better decision-making.

OpenText Software Delivery Management is implemented across technology-focused industries, supporting Agile processes like requirements management and defect tracking. Organizations use it to standardize development workflows and optimize continuous delivery integration, choosing it for its ability to support both Agile and Waterfall methodologies within application lifecycle management.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Tennis Australia, WeCloud AB, Port Otago Limited, Logicalis US, Valmer, The Chevrolet Volt, Ashurst

Orange, Airbus, Haufe Group, Kellogg's, Claro, Bon Secours, World Wide Technology

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. OpenText Software Delivery Management