IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs Polarion ALM comparison

IBM and Siemens are both solutions in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category. IBM is ranked #11 with an average rating of 6.3, while Siemens is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. IBM holds a 1.5% mindshare in EAP, compared to Siemens’s 4.4% mindshare. Additionally, 64% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Siemens users who would recommend it.

IBM Engineering Workflow Ma...

Read 17 IBM Engineering Workflow Management reviews

1,153 Views
357 Comparison Views

64% willing to recommend

Polarion ALM

Read 23 Polarion ALM reviews

3,889 Views
1,050 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

IBM Engineering Workflow Ma...

Polarion ALM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

IBM Engineering Workflow Management and Polarion ALM are competing products in application lifecycle management. IBM often prevails in terms of pricing and support, while Polarion stands out for its advanced features, making it a worthwhile investment for many seeking comprehensive ALM capabilities.

Features: IBM Engineering Workflow Management is valued for its comprehensive task and project tracking, effective integration with other IBM tools, and robust change management functionalities. Polarion ALM offers extensive test management, customization options, and strong traceability features ensuring rigorous compliance, appealing to those needing versatile and powerful functionalities.

Room for Improvement: IBM Engineering Workflow Management could enhance its feature customization and improve its user interface for beginners. Additionally, providing more extensive documentation would help streamline onboarding. Polarion ALM could improve its out-of-the-box functionality and simplify its complex interface to be more user-friendly. Enhancing the extraction of quality data from management reports is another area for improvement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Engineering Workflow Management is recognized for its straightforward deployment and strong customer support, facilitating seamless integration into existing systems. Polarion ALM's deployment can be complex due to customization options but is supported by a responsive customer service team, offering flexibility with added complexity.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Engineering Workflow Management offers a competitive initial setup cost with a promising ROI, especially for those leveraging IBM's ecosystem. Polarion ALM, although higher in upfront costs, provides compelling ROI for organizations seeking extensive ALM features that justify the investment. The choice often hinges on whether the advanced capabilities of Polarion ALM outweigh its initial costs.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs. Polarion ALM

July 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 Workflow Ma...

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

11th

Average Rating

6.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Configuration Management (3rd)

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Workflow Management is 1.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.4%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

Featured Reviews

Suvajit Chakraborty

Manager, Digital Engineering at Harman International

Offers good traceability elements but UI needs improvement

There is room for improvement in the UI. The UI has to improve a lot compared to the competitive tools, like Atlassian Jira, for example. It's very easy to use. It is easy to manage and easy to use. Anybody can learn it right quickly and start with it. But IBM ELM is something where somebody has to have good knowledge, training, and understanding and then only start using it. But there's a big known knowledge curve for IBM ELM. But once that is there, it's normally; organizations do have their own internal team to basically manage it IBM ELM portfolio, the tool chain. So if they have internal teams who are doing it for quite some time, not something new, then it is definitely better. But if there's if somebody is starting new, definitely there is a knowledge curve time it can take at least a year or maybe a couple of years before they can start realizing the benefits.

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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

"Good for managing stories, sprints, hydration and releases."

"Agile templates give us a standard methodology for every Agile project. Also, the ability to create our own object types and linkages to features/epics allows us to enhance the verification of feature readiness."

"All of the features work together to provide a powerful holistic solution - from the dashboard all the way through to security."

"The tool provides traceability and reporting, which are important for compliance and measuring progress."

"The most valuable features of the solution are highly customizable reports and visibility for all the higher management."

"We can track the status of test cases (passed or saved) in a single view. Based on releases and other attributes, we generate various reports and extract metrics from the data."

"It was an all-in-one solution for source code, integrated source control, defect tracking, and project planning."

"Work distribution among team members and accountability for completion with a clearer picture."

More IBM Engineering Workflow Management pros

"It is a very stable solution."

"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 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."

"The technical support is quite good."

"It offers good performance."

"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."

"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."

"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

"If you have multiple projects on one server, the tool becomes very slow, and some reports take longer to load."

"Teams need clearer pictures of resource availability in charts and dashboards along with plans."

"The solution is very heavily vendor dependent."

"Some administrative tasks are difficult to perform. These could be simplified."

"I would rate the IBM Engineering Workflow Management a seven or an eight. I am leaning closer to seven based on a couple of items I mentioned that I would like to see or know more about, such as improved reporting."

"Improved graphics in terms of metrics and connectivity to SharePoint from Microsoft products would be beneficial."

"Lacks ability to customize and reporting can be slow."

"It's becoming less relevant. For example, Maven has evolved, and in its later versions, there are plugins for integrating with source control systems, such as Git-based systems. Support for these plugins is diminishing."

More IBM Engineering Workflow Management cons

"The most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."

"As Polarion ALM is a development-oriented tool, easy support or easy access is provided by default, but if I want to use detailed features, I need to write the script, particularly the VM script, and this is its area for improvement. I want Polarion ALM to have a graphical user interface that doesn't need scripting. In the next release of the tool, I'd like for it to not require scripting and programming because needing to run script language is time-consuming."

"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."

"Technical support needs some improvement."

"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."

"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."

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

"The user interface is not yet optimized."

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I've heard IBM Engineering Workflow Management is more expensive than other tools."

"It's an expensive investment to make, so the decision should be driven on individual requirements."

"It is not a free tool. We use a token-based licensing model, which is specific to IBM. The cost per token is around $115-$120."

"Licensing: The solution cost is high and should be brought down to increase competition."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"It is an expensive product."

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

"The solution is 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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

18%

Government

14%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

28%

Computer Software Company

12%

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 Engineering Workflow Management?

We can track the status of test cases (passed or saved) in a single view. Based on releases and other attributes, we generate various reports and extract metrics from the data.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

I've heard IBM Engineering Workflow Management is more expensive than other tools. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

Improved graphics in terms of metrics and connectivity to SharePoint from Microsoft products would be beneficial.

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 backlog management for Agile in Polarion ALM could be improved or enhanced in future releases. What is missing is that if you have a hierarchy in your backlog with epics, features, and user sto...

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What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?

We are in our product development using Polarion ALM's functionalities. I am a power user, partly responsible for configuring the tool. We are using it for many things. The idea was to go for a req...

See all answers

Comparisons

Jira vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 43% of the time

Endevor vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 11% of the time

Codebeamer vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 10% of the time

GitLab vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 8% of the time

ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Engineering Workflow Management Competitors

Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM

Compared 30% of the time

Jira vs Polarion ALM

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM

Compared 14% of the time

Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM

Compared 8% of the time

More Polarion ALM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Workflow Management

August 2025

IBM Engineering Workflow Management report

Download IBM Engineering Workflow Management product report

Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM

August 2025

Download Polarion ALM product report

Also Known As

IBM Rational Team Concert (IBM ALM), IBM RTC

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Overview

IBM Engineering Workflow Management manages plans, tasks, the project status and acts as the critical link between required and delivered work. It provides flexibility to adapt to any process, which enables companies to adopt faster release cycles and manage dependencies across both small and complex development projects. This solution offers no-charge server software and flexible pricing models. It becomes a complete IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management solution—when purchased as a set of seamlessly integrated tools: IBM Engineering Workflow Management, IBM Engineering Test Management, and IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next.

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

Telstra Corporation, Visteon, Atos SE, Panasonic Automotive Systems, IBM Global Technology Services, CareCore National, JTEKT Corp., ItaÒ BBA, Avea, CACEIS, Danske Bank Group, APIS IT

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs. Polarion ALM

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs. Polarion ALM

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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