IBM Rational Quality Manager vs TFS vs Zephyr Enterprise comparison

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87% willing to recommend
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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Rational Quality Manager, TFS, and Zephyr Enterprise based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText, IDERA, Microsoft and others in Test Management Tools.
To learn more, read our detailed Test Management Tools Report (Updated: April 2024).
769,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"RQM is something that we use everyday, so it has to be up and running, otherwise we would lose everything.""Latest features include versioning of testings which can be great when used for multiple releases of a product.""The most valuable feature is the RFT because it allows us to automate manual test cases.""Reusability and integration capabilities which make it a great choice for organizations that use a variety of development tools and platforms.""Integration with the other professional tools is a very strong advantage, so that we can have a traceability between the requirements and defects in Rational Team Concert. That's the most important aspect.""It allows user to add whichever widget (predefined) based on the need. It has integration with CCM and RM to achieve traceability.""It's very reliable as a solution.""RQM's best features are integration with test automation and performance testing."

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"The most valuable features of TFS are bug reporting and its high performance.""It's user friendly. We haven't had any issues so far. It's flexible. If we need something, we can always contact the owner in our headquarters to make a configuration.""TFS' most valuable feature is the triage process. It is a robust solution that is easy to use.""The most valuable feature of TFS is the central repository, and you can see what changes other developers did from which branch.""Version Control: TFS offers both the centralized “TFVC” version control technology as well as the distributed “Git” version control technology.""I like the Kanban board. It is very useful in terms of seeing who is working on what and what the current status of work is.""The initial setup is fairly easy.""The most valuable features are the dashboard and task-selection capability."

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"Zephyr Enterprise is a stable solution.""If anyone is looking for a good, lightweight, flexible and agile test management product, I think they would do very well with Zephyr Enterprise.""It has integration with test automation tools.""It has 90% of the basic features you need without having to pay a lot of extra money.""We use the solution for test case management.""It has many features, but the main things that we need are the test cycles and integration with automation because we have automation for the web and mobile applications. We use it for test case management to run the test cases and get the results. At this moment, it is fulfilling our requirements. We are able to get the test execution report and the test pass and fail report. This summary is delivered to our management.""The solution does its job well."

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Cons
"I think it's fine from a performance perspective but usability is something that needs improvement.""Mainly Quality Assurance and DevOps, but of course the whole company and management areas with more knowledge of quality and client success approach.""RQM could be improved by adding a feature that allows test requirements to be selected when creating a task plan.""While RQM allows for running tests and viewing results, it could be further enhanced in terms of performance and speed.""It would be helpful if we could assign a hierarchy to a group of test cases.""Adding support for uploading a collection of test cases would be a helpful addition.""Integration capabilities with other vendors' tools should improve.""Currently, the user interface needs to be more user-friendly."

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"The execution of test cases could stand improvement.""The usability of TFS is not that great.""The reporting functionality is something that they should work on.""They should have design patterns in TFS for the development team, and design patterns for the QA.""I'd like to see some kind of visualization tool for TFS that would make life much easier.""Integration from Visual Studio could be improved.""The dashboard needs more enhancements.""The interface can be improved and made more user-friendly."

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"Creating better default varieties of reporting would make the product much better and more popular.""Zephyr Enterprise needs to redesign the reporting.""The reporting, and the ability to reorganize the test repository, which are a little stifling. There is definitely room for improvement there.""We have a lot of automation for our products, and we require a utility for its integration with automation. Currently, we have to write this utility ourselves. It would be great if they can provide such a utility.""The reporting, and the ability to reorganize the test repository, which are a little stifling. There is definitely room for improvement there.""We would like support for the agile and behavior-driven development (BDD) approaches.""We faced some errors while uploading the test cases.""Security needs improvement to protect customer information better."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The licenses of these tools (the whole CLM package) is very costly as compared to other vendors' tools."
  • "Each license includes 12 months of customer support. A free 90-day trial of the software is also available."
  • More IBM Rational Quality Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's just as expensive as HPE ALM, without many of the features, best used for development tool only to avoid higher costs."
  • "TFS is on the higher side, but if you intend to use the tool as a complete ALM tool, it will reduce your costs in the long run."
  • "Use the Microsoft recommended “seat-based” licensing model. This allows a single developer with multiple machines to consume only one client license."
  • "If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services."
  • "It is pretty expensive compared to other project management tools."
  • "The pricing is reasonable at this time."
  • "TFS is more competitively priced than some other solutions."
  • "We pay subscription fees on a yearly basis and the price is reasonable."
  • More TFS Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "DFS is more expensive than Zephyr. DFS is around $32 per person, whereas Zephyr is $10 per person. There is a major difference in the price, which is the main reason why we are trying to shift to Zephyr."
  • "It costs a couple of thousand dollars for a little more than 125 users, per month."
  • More Zephyr Enterprise Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The one feature that has not allowed us to switch to any other solution is the integration with functional testing.
    Top Answer:IBM Rational has the RFT, which is rational functional testing. We do test automation with rational functional testing… more »
    Top Answer:We create test cases, and then we need to plan a new task plan feature from the existing task case file and execute the… more »
    Top Answer:TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft's technical team is supportive.
    Top Answer:There is a yearly licensing fee that needs to be paid.
    Top Answer:We faced some errors while uploading the test cases. The error was not clear. We did not know what the error was.
    Top Answer:We use the solution for test case management.
    Ranking
    7th
    Views
    604
    Comparisons
    308
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    383
    Rating
    8.3
    3rd
    Views
    2,136
    Comparisons
    1,253
    Reviews
    25
    Average Words per Review
    377
    Rating
    8.0
    4th
    Views
    3,137
    Comparisons
    1,620
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    187
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Rational Quality Manager
    Team Foundation Server
    SmartBear Zephyr
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Rational Quality Manager is a next-generation web-based collaboration tool that provides test artifact management, construction, and planning throughout the entire development process. IBM Rational Quality Manager is based on IBM’s successful Jazz™ platform and derives many of its popular intuitive features from Jazz™.

    IBM Rational Manager was developed for every type of test team in the marketplace today. Every role is included, such as test manager, test architect, lab manager, tester, and test lead. The solution is also able to include various roles outside the established test organization.

    IBM Rational Quality Manager Features and Benefits:

    • Customizable design and construction: Users can easily define the overall design for each and every test case. Every test case contains a robust text editor, which can include background data concerning the test case. Test cases can include links to developmental requirements and items. They can also include test artifacts, such as test scripts, test case execution processes, and test plans. Test cases can also be integrated with test suites.

    • Intuitive reporting: IBM Rational Quality Manager provides an intuitive set of predefined reports to ensure users get comprehensive status on all projects. Additional customized reports can be made available by using the Development Intelligence or Rational Insight features for more precise reporting. Users can view live test execution status and are also able to discover the relationship between test artifacts, development artifacts, and requirements in the traceability view.

    • Exhaustive test planning processes: Users define and customize test plans that will drive all activity for the organization's teams through every component of the project’s lifecycle. Everything is developed around the concept of: “ Is this ready for release?” The test plan defines the project scope and test effort, and contains the key indicators so all team members will understand the desired outcomes.

      Top test plan tasks include (but are not limited to):

      • Definition of test and business objectives.
      • Evaluate the size of the test effort.
      • Define different environments to test and develop test configurations.
      • Develop entrance criteria, exit criteria, and overall quality goals.
      • Create a review and approval process for the test plan and/or individual test cases.
      • View Real-time Test Progress

    • Collaboration made easy: Users can easily share data with other members of the team with the Collaboration Lifecycle Management (CLM). Team members can also assign tasks and view each other's progress. They can also distribute work for review and track the input and status of each reviewer. There is also the ability to lock artifacts to prevent others from editing a completed piece.

    • Security: IBM Rational Quality Manager can protect against attack threats and data breaches with the IBM AppScan Tester. This can help achieve higher quality and more secure applications with greater positive outcomes at a very reasonable competitive cost.

    • Governance: The solution will ensure that an organization’s business processes are in compliance with department, corporate, industry, regional, and government regulations and standards. IBM Rational Quality Manager will correlate test processes and create suitable records of testing results and project history to comply with any auditing process.

    Visual Studio’s Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a powerful application development lifecycle management solution. It aids developers in managing every aspect of their DevOps and application creation. TFS combines many different types of solutions into a single powerful platform.

    Visual Studio TFS Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy TFS include:

    • Build automation. TFS enables users to create definitions that can easily automate any and all tasks that are critical to the development of their applications. Businesses can utilize features that are built into TFS to accomplish preset tasks that can help them create the application of their choice. This can include enabling them to run automated tests when the need arises. Additionally, users can create custom tasks that will run automatically and allow users to focus their attention on the areas that most demand their focus.
    • Security. TFS is designed with the security of a user’s DevOps in mind. It enables an organization to restrict user permissions so that only developers that are meant to have access to particular parts of the development process can perform tasks related to those sections. It segments the development process to reduce the possibility of sensitive data being stolen.
    • Enables product rollbacks. TFS keeps copies of past versions of the organization’s application. Users can sift through the different versions that are available and can redeploy the version that best fits their needs should it ever become necessary to do so.

    Visual Studio TFS Features

    • Source code management. TFS comes with all of the tools that developers need to completely manage their source code. They can share their code so that multiple developers can work on the same project. Additionally, TFS enables them to do things like review the history of a particular piece of source code.

    • Project management. Organizations can leverage the wealth of project management features that TFS offers and ensure that their projects run as smoothly as possible. Project managers are able to use TFS to control every aspect of their project, from the planning stage until the application’s development has reached its conclusion.
    • Reporting. TFS enables users to generate reports that leverage critical metrics and provide them with important insights into the applications that they are creating. These comprehensive reports can be secured so that only users with the proper level of clearance can access them.

    Reviews from Real Users

    TFS is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its source code management capabilities and its powerful integration suite.

    Carl B., the vice president of engineering at Vertex Downhole Ltd, writes, “The most valuable features are related to source code management. Using TFS for source code management and being able to branch and have multiple developers work on the same projects is valuable. We can also branch and merge code back together.”

    Ashish K., the principal consultant at Wipro, says, “I have found almost all of the features valuable because it integrates well with your Microsoft products. If a client is using the entire Microsoft platform, then TFS would be definitely preferable. It integrates with the digital studio development environment as well.”

    Zephyr Enterprise is a robust enterprise test management platform that manages all aspects of the testing lifecycle. The solution is provided as an on-premise installation as well as a SaaS-based installation. Zephyr Enterprise enables you to make a rigid process flow flexible enough to accommodate changes. In addition, it provides all the functionality QA teams and testers need in order to create and execute test cases with less effort, allowing more time to do actual testing by alleviating significant time-wasting steps.

    Zephyr Enterprise Features

    Zephyr Enterprise has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Visual dashboards
    • One-click integration
    • Multi Jira instance
    • Scalability
    • Third-Party Integrations
    • Reporting & Statistics
    • Data Import/Export
    • Data Visualization
    • User Management
    • Move & Copy
    • Software Testing Management
    • Requirements-Based Testing
    • Industry-strength scalability
    • Documented APIs
    • Regular maintenance and upgrades

    Zephyr Enterprise Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Zephyr Enterprise. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Ready-to-use reports and customizable dashboards: With Zephyr Enterprise, reports and dashboards are updated in real time and you can share test results and link with your team in Jira to connect any known issues. In addition, the solution helps you increase workflow efficiency because it improves info sharing during standup meetings.
    • Supports bi-directional and multi-instance Jira integration: Not only does Zephyr Enterprise support bi-directional and multi-instance Jira integration, but it also gives you the ability to support multiple projects simultaneously – up to 200,000 test cases.
    • Global repository for test cases: Zephyr Enterprise helps you create, categorize, and store your test cases via a global repository that can be shared across your entire organization. You can also quickly reuse test cases using the structured folder management.
    • Test execution: Zephyr Enterprise makes it possible for you to execute tests step by step, manage pass/fail status, and launch automated execution, then file those defects into Jira. Zephyr Enterprise test executions allow teams to operate in a more efficient way.

    • Universal test automation: Zephyr Enterprise supports a wide range of automation frameworks, helping you decrease operational costs and increase test coverage.

      Reviews from Real Users

      Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Zephyr Enterprise solution.

      A Manager of Enterprise Applications at a retailer says what’s most valuable is that “It's very easy and simple to use, which is beneficial. It has 90% of the basic features you need without having to pay a lot of extra money.” He also adds, “Zephyr Enterprise is very stable and the initial setup is straightforward.”

      Jawaad A., Test Automation Lead at Trapeze, explains, "It has many features, but the main things that we need are the test cycles and integration with automation because we have automation for the web and mobile applications. We use it for test case management to run the test cases and get the results. At this moment, it is fulfilling our requirements. We are able to get the test execution report and the test pass and fail report. This summary is delivered to our management."
    Sample Customers
    Ehrhardt, Cisco Systems, Anadolu Hayat Emeklilik, CareCore National, ItaÒ BBA, Barr
    Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
    Hyundai, Fujitsu, Google, David Jones, Burger King, Ingenico, Websense, Dow Jones, Harris, Saab
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Government43%
    Computer Software Company29%
    Healthcare Company14%
    Transportation Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Manufacturing Company19%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Retailer9%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm26%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Energy/Utilities Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization52%
    Computer Software Company7%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise64%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise4%
    Large Enterprise68%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise59%
    Large Enterprise33%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Test Management Tools
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText, IDERA, Microsoft and others in Test Management Tools. Updated: April 2024.
    769,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.