IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs Planview AgilePlace comparison

IBM and Planview are both solutions in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category. IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 6.5, while Planview is ranked #17. IBM holds a 3.9% mindshare in ALM, compared to Planview’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 77% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Planview users who would recommend it.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...

Read 20 IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) reviews

1,624 Views
1,608 Comparison Views

77% willing to recommend

Planview AgilePlace

Read 11 Planview AgilePlace reviews

1,126 Views
1,058 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...

Planview AgilePlace

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 2026

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management and Planview AgilePlace compete in agile project management, with IBM offering robust enterprise-level capabilities while Planview stands out for its intuitive approach. In terms of features, IBM provides a comprehensive suite, while Planview shines in usability and simplicity.

Features: IBM ELM offers robust integration of complex engineering processes with features such as requirements management, quality management, and reporting. It caters to enterprises needing comprehensive lifecycle management. Planview AgilePlace is known for its intuitive drag-and-drop Kanban boards, enabling agile and lean project tracking. Its features cater to teams desiring clear project visualization.

Room for Improvement: IBM ELM could enhance its user interface to be more intuitive and improve integration with non-IBM tools. It may also benefit from streamlined workflows for small to medium-sized teams. Planview AgilePlace could focus on expanding its reporting capabilities and enhancing customizable options for better adaptability. It might also consider offering more advanced project forecasting tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM ELM's deployment supports large enterprises with scalable options, aided by dedicated technical assistance. Planview AgilePlace provides simpler deployment, suitable for smaller teams, and is backed by responsive support. This highlights IBM's focus on complex needs versus Planview's simplicity and ease of adoption.

Pricing and ROI: IBM ELM involves higher initial costs due to its extensive functionalities but offers substantial ROI for enterprises utilizing its full capabilities. Planview AgilePlace offers cost-effective setup with quick ROI, emphasizing effective project management for agile-focused teams.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Planview AgilePlace Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Planview AgilePlace

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Planview AgilePlace

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

17th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 3.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planview AgilePlace is 1.9%, up from 1.8% 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 (%)
IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)	3.9%
Planview AgilePlace	1.9%
Other	94.2%

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

Nathan Streyle

Perfect Execution Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Gives us visibility into projects and enables users to leave comments on different projects

We use the submit feedback button pretty often. I encourage the teams to use that if they see anything that could be improved. But we've been really happy with how fast LeanKit improves. The biggest improvement would be the API and data connections and making the data more accessible or quicker to access. One of our team members has brought up actual-time tracking on a card as a potential improvement. They had an interest in knowing how long a specific card had been worked on by a specific user or somebody that was assigned to that card. But there's not really a way for them to start and stop a time that they were actually working on it, except for if we created a different lane and they dragged it into the lane and then stopped using it in the lane. They requested that there'd be some sort of timer function on each one of the tasks.

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."

"We have something called the GC (global configuration), which is a unique feature compared to any other competitor we have in the ALM space."

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

"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."

"IBM Rational ALM is a very good tool. I like the management and traceability features and the test management tool. The latter is not linked with the stories and fixed management. It is really useful, and we can create test plans. We can also test some metrics related to QA."

"The word emulation and importing is good."

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

"Everyone in a team can work on the same platform and share the same information."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) pros

"My team specifically uses our board for all of our Remedy tickets that come in. We had a card for every ticket that we get, and we're able to add the link to that specific ticket there.If I'm out of office, for example, and someone else needs to work a ticket or someone is being contacted to work on a ticket, I don't have to sign on it. Someone else can easily access that ticket because I put the link in there. It's nice. It has a lot of great functionality in there."

"People found the ability to set up different lanes and the ability to see where they're within the progress most valuable. They can use different colored cards or sticky notes, and then they can separate out which cards belong to a department or the initiative they're working on. They can filter who's working on it, and I've got good feedback about that."

"LeanKit is amazing when it comes to getting answers about a given card's status. That's one of the biggest takeaways that we've had. The status is right there on the board. Everybody can see it. You just click on it and it gives you everything that you need to know, especially the comments feature because it gives us a timeline of updates. We use that a lot where we write a comment on the card and then we can see and track progress as we move it across the board."

"The transparency that it brings is valuable. I like to look at things from all angles, and sometimes, flip chart paper on a wall and sticky notes are better than something on a screen, but the way they've made it accessible from all points for anyone within an organization is great. As a project management guy, sometimes, you have to force people into new environments where they have to see what you're talking about. Any screen is a barrier, and people got to get into the screen. How do you know they do? You don't necessarily know, but you are getting around that barrier with a countermeasure of making it accessible to as many as possible. So, everyone can jump in there and see everything. It is fully transparent, and I like that. This is one thing that helps."

"We use the board and card hierarchies in terms of sprints so that we can see if we have cross-functional teams that are working on the same projects together, especially when projects have dependencies. The parent-child relationship within cards is really nice so that we can see what kind of dependencies there are when we're trying to get projects finished."

"Using the tool seems to save time versus trying to do things in a regular manner. It is highly collaborative; everybody can see things in one place. It is a highly functional, but pretty simple tool. That is hard to find: A tool that has a lot of functions, but is also simple."

"I would say it's highly scalable. LeanKit can scale across the enterprise easily. Every business could probably find a use case for leveraging LeanKit."

"The "Blocking" feature has helped our scrum masters track impediments and share them at the program level to stakeholders with accountability and detail so that they understand and the action items which can be noted easily."

More Planview AgilePlace pros

Cons

"The features should be more intuitive. If I'm looking for something, its location should be easy to locate."

"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."

"Some improvements to the user interface (UI) would be helpful, such as exposing more services to make it easier to customize to the needs of each customer."

"There is not enough beginner support material in the form of FAQs or simple training to help you get started."

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

"The stability of IBM Rational ALM could be improved."

"The GUI is a little bit outdated."

"Of course it would be related to customer experience. The solution is not user friendly at all. It needs an expert to use it, although the reporting feature was okay."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) cons

"The biggest improvement would be the API and data connections and making the data more accessible or quicker to access. One of our team members has brought up actual-time tracking on a card as a potential improvement. They had an interest in knowing how long a specific card had been worked on by a specific user or somebody that was assigned to that card. But there's not really a way for them to start and stop a time that they were actually working on it, except for if we created a different lane and they dragged it into the lane and then stopped using it in the lane."

"We are a 750-employee company, so we got lucky that our board approved the kind of funding we needed for the solution. But, LeanKit probably needs to reduce its pricing."

"They have a feature called Instant Coffee. It was in the beta phase. They released it from beta, and now, it is a legit thing. We were in the pilot here. I liked the idea of Instant Coffee, and I like how it is integrated, to some degree, with LeanKit, but I have two big rocks to throw at them on this. The first one is that Instant Coffee does not save your work very well in terms of saving it in formats that you can then go back and edit as Visio would. It leads to the next point, which is, we're not really clear on what they're trying to do with Instant Coffee. I feel that they're trying not to reinvent Visio, Miro, and other software programs out there that do mapping, visual diagrams, etc. Miro is fantastic in that regard. I gather they're not trying to reinvent Miro, but it sure would be nice if it had more aspects of Miro in it, such as being able to draw arrows and write on them on the top."

"The ability to report on customizable fields and third-party extensions needs improvement. I'd like to see more of those being able to be used. I don't know how that works for Planview, but just getting a little bit more added there would be nice."

"It is a pretty good product. It is really hard to think of things that I'd want to be improved. Sometimes, we use it for project management lessons learned. So, we have three columns, such as Could be Improved, Keep Doing, and Works Really Well. It would be helpful if there was a template set up for something like that because we code different cards based on the category. For example, if something belongs to the Could be Improved category, we may have those cards as yellow, but then I have to change the color of them and put a header. It is not as smooth, but it still works fine. To be honest, I don't have a lot of complaints about it."

"There's room for improvement with the Instant Coffee feature. There are other businesses that have been interested in leveraging a virtual whiteboard or sticky note capability and how Instant Coffee was developed has not met the mark."

"The integration with the Enterprise One product is probably an area for improvement. It's not really broken. It's just that it is such a handy tool and a great way to visually manage things. There is a very limited hookup/integration between Enterprise One, which is the master Planview tool, and LeanKit. While they are looking at this on their roadmap, it definitely needs to happen. There is a lot of opportunity there."

"I do not know what it can do in the area of scrum. Maybe it has that functionality. I have never tried to set it up. You think of LeanKit from the perspective of Kanban. I don't know if there is a template for scrum, a scaled agile framework, or any of those scaling frameworks."

More Planview AgilePlace cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not cheap."

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

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

"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."

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

"I don't believe there are any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"I don't know what it would be on its own. It was basically included with what we were already paying or using. So, it was a no-brainer. It wasn't like we had to sell the company on making a purchase or anything like that. There weren't any costs that came in after implementing it."

"In general, Planview's cost structure is reasonable. You get quite a lot of functionality for the license cost that you get."

"As far as I understand, it is not an expensive application."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

22%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

University

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Insurance Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational ALM?

The solution is customizable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Rational ALM?

I think usability should be improved in IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) as the top priority. If you look at the UI, it was literally designed ten years ago, and even at the time it was i...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Rational ALM?

For companies in heavily regulated industries who are doing product development, IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is a good tool. It helps them create documentation that satisfies auditors.

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Jira vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 19% of the time

Codebeamer vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 10% of the time

Polarion ALM vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 9% of the time

Jama Connect vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) Competitors

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 22% of the time

Jira Align vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 16% of the time

Jira vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 13% of the time

Rally Software vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 10% of the time

Polarion ALM vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 10% of the time

More Planview AgilePlace Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

January 2026

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) report

Download IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) product report

Buyer's Guide

Planview AgilePlace

January 2026

Download Planview AgilePlace product report

Also Known As

IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS

Planview LeanKit, LeanKit

Overview

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) offers an integrated platform with customizable workflows, Scrum planning tools, and resource management features, enhancing project execution and collaboration.

ELM supports Agile and Scrum project management through its integration with tools like Git and IBM Doors, providing cataloging, traceability, and reporting capabilities. While users benefit from requirement management and dashboard functionalities, the interface and reporting could be improved for better navigation and customization. Its cloud-based architecture facilitates compliance and auditing, making it a valuable tool for engineering teams focusing on configuration and version control.

What are the essential features of IBM ELM?

Customizable Workflows: Tailor project processes to specific needs for adaptability.
Scrum-Based Planning: Facilitate Agile project management with Scrum tools.
Resource Management: Efficiently allocate and track resource usage.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly integrate with Git and IBM Doors for enhanced traceability.
Global Configuration: Manage configurations across locations for consistency.

What benefits should users consider?

Compliance Support: Provides tools essential for meeting industry regulations.
Collaboration: Streamlines team communication for smooth project execution.
Stakeholder Alignment: Enhances visibility and alignment with personalized dashboards.
Traceability: Ensures complete tracking of requirements and changes for accountability.

ELM is widely used in the automotive and manufacturing sectors for managing requirements and monitoring performance. Engineering teams leverage ELM for Agile methodologies, with central teams deploying it for end-to-end development processes including requirement gathering and backlog management. Stability and improved integration support remain critical implementation areas, along with enhanced governance features for comprehensive application.

IBM

Planview AgilePlace is a cloud-based solution designed to provide businesses with a continuous flow of work to help teams accelerate delivery times by visualizing their work with enterprise Kanban boards and lean metrics. Planview offers project managers the visibility, resource management, and real-time analytics necessary to help their teams reduce bottlenecks and dependencies and work more effectively. By using Kanban boards, teams are able to visually track and manage the flow of their work from the strategy level, through implementation up to end-product delivery.

Planview AgilePlace Benefits

Planview helps teams to smoothly implement their strategies by offering its users the following benefits:

Time and cost management: Planview AgilePlace software provides a single pane of glass for you to monitor your project’s timetables, financial budgets, and costs. AgilePlace provides insights on cost estimates and helps your team reduce the risk of overspending or missing deadlines.

Effective resource allocation: By displaying a real-time view into both your future demands and current processes, Planview AgilePlace software offers resource management capabilities that enable you to effectively prioritize, schedule, and optimize your resource utilization.

Project management: Collaborate with your team to plan, manage, and deliver any type of project, either traditional, agile, or hybrid, using Planview AgilePlace’s project management toolset. The management feature set includes scheduling, Gantt charts, lifecycle management, time tracking, and more tools to help enhance project planning and implementation.

Real-time data and insights: Gain visibility for better decision making and more effective team dynamics. Plainview AgilePlace's flexible and intuitive dashboards and out-of-the-box reporting give a clear picture of the status of your projects and resources. The solution’s interactive visualizations deliver real-time data and insights for your projects and can be viewed by department, program, portfolio, or project, to assist you in making informed decisions.

Simplified logging: Track times, expenditures, and resources to avoid data loss and to help align business practices and goals.

Share your projects across the globe: Planview’s cloud-based solutions allow teams to work together from any time at any place using Planview’s shared central dashboard.

Powerful integrations: Automate the flow of information between Planview AgilePlace and external applications by seamlessly integrating with third-party software. AgilePlace’s open API can also be used to configure connections to other software systems. AgilePlace easily integrates with tools such as:
- Microsoft Azure DevOps
- Zapier
- Atlassian Jira Service Management
- Atlassian Jira Software
- Micro Focus ALM
- Zendesk
- Microsoft Power Automate
- Micro Focus PPM

Reviews from Real Users

Planview AgilePlace stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly management pane, the visibility that it provides for its users, and its agile management capabilities.

A manufacturing manager at a large manufacturing company writes, “Using the tool seems to save time versus trying to do things in a regular manner. It is highly collaborative; everybody can see things in one place. It is a highly functional, but pretty simple tool. That is hard to find: A tool that has a lot of functions, but is also simple.”

Planview

Sample Customers

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

REA Group, Thompson Reuters

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Planview AgilePlace

December 2025

Free Report: IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Planview AgilePlace

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Planview AgilePlace and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Planview AgilePlace report.

See our list of best Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites vendors.

We monitor all Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.