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 #12 with an average rating of 7.5, while Planview is ranked #15. IBM holds a 3.7% mindshare in ALM, compared to Planview’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 76% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Planview users who would recommend it.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...

Read 19 IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) reviews

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1,007 Comparison Views

76% willing to recommend

Planview AgilePlace

Read 11 Planview AgilePlace reviews

1,033 Views
544 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...

Planview AgilePlace

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 30, 2025

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management and Planview AgilePlace are competing in project management and development. IBM ELM stands out for its complexity in managing large-scale engineering projects, while Planview AgilePlace leads in agile workflow management due to its intuitive application.

Features: IBM ELM provides robust features for managing complex engineering workflows, including version control, comprehensive traceability, and quality management. It integrates seamlessly with other IBM tools, enhancing the ecosystem. Planview AgilePlace is distinguished by its easy-to-use Kanban boards, allowing fast task visualization within agile frameworks. Its features focus on flexibility and rapid iteration, ideal for agile teams.

Room for Improvement: IBM ELM can be challenging to deploy due to its complex setup, and its learning curve can be steep for new users. Customization options might be limited for teams with specific unique needs. Continuous updates are necessary to keep up with rapidly changing project requirements. Planview AgilePlace might improve by expanding its reporting capabilities and allowing more customization in data exports. Integration with existing tools could be smoother, and enhanced customer support options could benefit users requiring quick troubleshooting.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM ELM offers a more structured deployment, often requiring dedicated IT resources and significant initial setup. Its customer service is geared for stability in enterprise environments. In contrast, Planview AgilePlace supports quick deployment with a user-friendly interface, offering responsive support tailored to agile teams, enabling smooth transitions with minimal disruption.

Pricing and ROI: IBM ELM involves higher setup costs, reflective of its extensive capabilities and integration options. It's ideal for organizations demanding detailed oversight, with ROI justifying the investment. Planview AgilePlace has a cost-effective setup, appealing to smaller teams seeking immediate results with lower initial investments. Its adaptable pricing models ensure quick returns, ideal for organizations undergoing agile transformation without incurring large expenses.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Planview AgilePlace

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

Planview AgilePlace

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

15th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 3.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planview AgilePlace is 1.6%, down from 2.0% 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.

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

"I would rate the stability of this product a nine out of ten."

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

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

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

"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."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) pros

"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."

"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."

"It makes work visible, so everybody knows where everything is. It uses Kanban, and that makes work visible."

"Every feature is valuable. LeanKit is a Kanban-based tool where you have a visual interface that you can use to create various cards and to create boards to house those cards. You can create a board for managing project work. You can create a board to do PI planning. It is pretty close to the agile way of doing business."

"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."

"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."

"Adoption across stakeholders and visibility have been the biggest success for us with LeanKit."

More Planview AgilePlace pros

Cons

"In the next release, we expect a traceability metrics configuration where we can configure the user stories. We also expect them to improve or simplify the query process."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) cons

"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."

"Being able to track actual time on cards or sprints, instead of using just the planned start and stop date, would also be useful. I would like to see something like JIRA has with actual sprint starts and stops."

"Our overall impression of Leankit has been very positive, however, our experience with the JIRA integration into our Leankit boards was much harder than we anticipated and that could be improved by simplifying it somehow."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Planview AgilePlace cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution is not cheap."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

24%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

11%

Transportation Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Insurance Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Healthcare Company

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...

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

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Compared 27% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

Polarion ALM vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)

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Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 35% of the time

Jira vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 32% of the time

Jira Align vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 17% of the time

OpenText Application Quality Management vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 10% of the time

Rally Software vs Planview AgilePlace

Compared 7% of the time

More Planview AgilePlace 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

Planview AgilePlace

June 2025

Download Planview AgilePlace product report

Also Known As

IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS

Planview LeanKit, LeanKit

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

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

June 2025

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

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