IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs Polarion ALM comparison

IBM and Siemens are both solutions in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category. IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.5, while Siemens is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 3.5% mindshare in ALM, compared to Siemens’s 8.2% mindshare. Additionally, 76% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Siemens users who would recommend it.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...

Read 19 IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) reviews

1,447 Views
1,003 Comparison Views

76% willing to recommend

Polarion ALM

Read 22 Polarion ALM reviews

3,837 Views
2,560 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...

Polarion ALM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 30, 2025

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management and Polarion ALM compete in the software lifecycle management market. IBM ELM has the upper hand with its stronger feature set and scalability, while Polarion ALM stands out for its cost-effectiveness and ease of integration.

Features: IBM ELM offers comprehensive lifecycle management with strong requirements and change management, excellent scalability, and integration with IBM products. It supports detailed customization, making it suitable for larger enterprises. Polarion ALM provides robust traceability, real-time management features, and strong support for Agile and DevOps practices, making it user-friendly and appealing for medium-sized companies.

Room for Improvement: IBM ELM can be complex to deploy, requiring expertise and more user-friendly interfaces. Linear learning curves could hinder quick onboarding. Enhanced documentation for better user guidance. Polarion ALM needs improved out-of-the-box functionalities for better initial setup, enhanced customization options for detailed requirements, and stronger documentation handling for complex environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM ELM involves a complex enterprise-oriented deployment model, with robust support and consultation services for large-scale operations. Polarion ALM, in contrast, offers straightforward deployment, quick setup, and a responsive support team, suiting those seeking rapid implementation.

Pricing and ROI: IBM ELM generally comes with a higher initial cost due to its comprehensive features and scalability, promising significant long-term ROI for large enterprises. Polarion ALM’s lower entry cost and efficient deployment provide competitive ROI, appealing more to organizations with budget constraints and the need for immediate returns.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Polarion ALM Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Polarion ALM

June 2025

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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

12th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 3.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.2%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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) ( /products/ibm-engineering-lifecycle-management-elm-reviews ) 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.

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Dina Bindi

Information and Communication technology at CNH Industrial

Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility

It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"The integration with Git works well."

"The solution is customizable."

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

"The word emulation and importing is good."

"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."

"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 transition to a SaaS-based solution is a distinct advantage."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) pros

"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."

"The technical support is quite good."

"You can see the work ticket and you can circulate that within the teams. You can define your flows, customize according to your needs, and you can create dashboards and create the reports according to your needs."

"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."

"The features I find the most valuable are requirement tracking and schematics."

"It offers good performance."

"The software is stable."

"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

"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."

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

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

"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."

"The user interface requires significant improvement as it is overly complex."

"The GUI is a little bit outdated."

"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."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) cons

"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."

"We use PTC Windchill, and Polarion ALM doesn't have native integration, so we had to purchase the connector to integrate it with Polarion ALM. We still haven't implemented it."

"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."

"Test management lacks an automated process."

"The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."

"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."

"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."

"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

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

"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."

"The solution is expensive."

"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."

"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."

"It is an expensive product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

26%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Transportation Company

Manufacturing Company

26%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

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...

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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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Polarion ALM?

It is a very stable solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?

The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates. Sometimes, database migrations take too long, spanning two...

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What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?

As a manual tester, I use Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) for our weekly builds validation. These builds are crucial as they eventually lead to final release builds for customers. I...

See all answers

Comparisons

Jira vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 18% of the time

Codebeamer vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 17% of the time

PTC Integrity vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 9% of the time

Atlassian ALM vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) Competitors

Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM

Compared 30% of the time

Jira vs Polarion ALM

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM

Compared 15% of the time

Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM

Compared 8% of the time

GitLab vs Polarion ALM

Compared 3% of the time

More Polarion ALM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

June 2025

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) report

Download IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) product report

Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM

May 2025

Download Polarion ALM product report

Also Known As

IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS

No data available

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

The world’s first 100% browser-based ALM enterprise solution, which enables seamless collaboration across disparate teams, multi-directionally linked work items, full traceability, accelerated productivity and automated proof of compliance.

Siemens

Sample Customers

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

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Polarion ALM

June 2025

Free Report: IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Polarion ALM

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