IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) Reviews

We began using this product in 2014 as a work management tool. After that, we gained knowledge of the Agile framework and implemented these features in Rational. We now have five scrum teams, all of them using this solution for scrum planning. This includes dashboards and the Kanban view in order to support them.

The most valuable features are the customizability, workflow, and Kanban components. You can customize the board according to your needs.

The reporting functionality needs to be improved. They have developed a reporting model but it is not available out-of-the-box. It is especially important when we are talking about Kanban and KPIs. We have some metrics related to lead time and throughput, but we cannot produce them out-of-the-box.

There are two features called the Program Board and Quick Learning that need administrator access to use. This is risky and it is not good practice to have more than one administrator on the tool, so the problem is that we can't give this level of access to normal users and it is an obstacle in the way of using these features.

We have been using IBM Rational ALM for about six years, since 2014.

We are happy with the scalability, although it is related to licensing. We have different types of licensing including concurrent floating and stakeholder. I think that we have 12 concurrent licenses and a total of 50 users who are assigned to these different concurrent pools.

To this point, we have not needed to scale. If we extend the functionality and integrate it with the DevOps tool, with respect to continuous integration and continuous deployment, then we may increase our usage.

We normally rely on our local vendor for support. We did contact IBM in the Dubai office one time. They were responsive and we were happy with the support.

We did not use a similar solution prior to choosing this one.

The implementation is easy and the initial setup is straightforward. Having knowledge of the Agile framework and the scrum practices help very much when it comes to setting it up. Without this knowledge, you will not be able to maximize the benefit of this product.

We have a local vendor who assisted us with the deployment.

My advice for anybody who is implementing IBM Rational ALM is to have the right balance of trained people. They need to know about the Agile framework, using the tool, and how to customize it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use for implementing this solution was to use it for was for a science project at a university. We used it to monitor progress and enhance productivity.

The product helped us organize projects and effectively use our resources. Essentially it helped with time management. It improved our resource utility and helped assure on-time completion.

The most valuable component of this solution was in its ability to help us with the management of tools and the resources that we were using.

There are a few ways to potentially improve the product although it performs as expected. 

Reporting can be easier to do and customize, but it is adequate.

Product support could be better for new users by providing more beginner-type tutorials. While the product itself is not so complex, step-by-step instructions that help new users understand the basics will make the product easier to adopt. When we started to use the product it was a little bit of mess because we were not used to using it and implemented it poorly in some ways that would have been easy to avoid. Using the product efficiently will be better if there are step-by-step and interactive guides.

It would be nice if there were some more possibilities for storing either custom or standard information like stack information, memory cards type and capacity, or other details about products that can be visualized easily in case they may need to be upgraded to solve performance issues.

It was a product we decided to use for educational purposes and to provide some guidance to complete projects on time.

The product is stable. We went with this product for management of lifecycle mostly because it was offered by a well-known, reliable company. We assumed it would be stable and we are not disappointed.

We never really needed to scale the usage a lot, but we never had an issue adding users or projects, so scalability is good.

I was satisfied with the level of technical support, but it can be a little better. It doesn't have to do exactly with the technical support team, but more with additional material and information which you could find on their website.

For example, if you know the questions and you know it is probably a common thing that people need to know, you should not have to call support to find the answer. If you had a better collection of frequently asked questions — a FAQ — users could quickly solve more of their own problems. This source of information does not currently exist.

When you are not so experienced there are a lot of basic questions you have and you should have easy answers. Instead of being able to just find the answer yourself in a knowledge base or forum, you have to ask other people with more experience. It wouldn't be necessary if they would just provide some more information.

We were using JIRA for other larger projects. That is a product which is more difficult to learn. ALM was not very complicated and we did not need something that would take time for people to learn when doing short-term projects. It is easier to use than JIRA which is for longer-term planning.

The installation was not so easy, but not difficult. The installation itself was not hard but then you had to know something to configure the projects. It was not just bam-bam and it's done but it's not really difficult to configure it to do what you need.

I think that a person with a little bit of experience will make quick work of the setup.

I was satisfied using this product because it has done what it was intended to do. It's user-friendly and technical support wasn't too bad. We used IBM Rational ALM as it was created by one of the leaders in the industry. Apparently it was not as difficult to use as some other products.

On a scale from one to ten with one being the worst and ten being the best, I would personally rate this product as an eight of ten.

If I gave it a ten it would mean that I was so satisfied that I wouldn't need any additional services and so on. It would be perfect. In my opinion, it is better to rate something like an eight or nine so that there is room for improvement

Like anything, we had to learn how to set it up to make it useful for what we intended to have it do. Without optimization, it's more difficult and more complicated for inexperienced users to apply in a project.

My advice is that if you are considering this as a solution, you should definitely try it because it is a good solution to use for time management and product lifecycle tracking without having to get very involved.

We're using it for project management, using Agile Scrum. We are using it for requirements management and for test management. We have three products: one for requirements management, one for testing management, and the other for project and task management.

It has improved relations with the customer through the Product Backlog and prioritizing their needs before launch. It has improved the cycle between the developers and the analysts, through redefining the acceptance criteria. Everything is clear from the beginning of the Sprint. It provides a lot of benefits.

The planning features are rich with Scrum concepts: Sprint, Sprint retrospective, the rules in the Scrum framework.

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. 

It has a high level of stability. It's up and running most of the time.

Scalability is not really an issue for us because we don't have a lot of users. The license is expensive. We have a limited number of concurrent users. We haven't tested the scalability. With our limited number of users, the performance is okay, the availability is okay.

We have a maintenance license with IBM so we have technical support, but we have not had major incidents.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are technical support, and, of course, the total value of ownership.

In terms of advice, ultimately this is a tool. You have to change the process and train your people to utilize this tool.

I would rate Rational ALM at eight out of 10. It covers the whole process of application lifecycle management, from requirements definition and management through the development process by planning Agile Scrums, by tracking the work items from their creation to closing, and it's integrated with RQM, the test management software. It covers the lifecycle, implementing Agile Scrum in a very powerful way.