PTC Integrity Reviews

We were evaluating PTC Integrity for the deployment for one of my clients. The major problem we faced regarding Integrity are the developments.

We found the requirement management and the version control features to be the most useful for our client. We missed out on the traceability part. For traceability, you need to develop a lot of scripts and you need a lot of background work.

The development environment is only on JavaScripts but other languages are not. For example, .NET platforms. It's not so customizable. Compared to other tools, defining user stories is a slightly more cumbersome process as an ALM engineer.

It is quite mature. 

I don't find it that scalable. Scalability is a concern for this particular tool.

The client that we have worked with for the department that we have deployed this particular solution has 120 to 140 members.

It's used on a regular basis. 

Technical support is excellent from PTC.

The initial setup was slightly complex. When we decided to have an isolated solution, PTC was not that user-friendly.

The complete deployment took around nine months to one year.

It requires four engineers for deployment and maintenance.

I head the complete ALM department at my organization. We have a team of ALM engineers across different tools, not only for PTC Integrity but also for IBM codeBeamer. 

Requirement management and software configuration management had better options. We found that they're more stable though they're not so scalable. During production time or during work time we don't have many production delivery issues.

My advice to someone considering this solution is to prepare yourself by having a good programming team that has good customization engineers. It requires a lot of programming skills.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

In the next release, I would like for there to not be so many scripts and programs to do workflow customization. It should be easily customizable.

I mainly used PTC to make a JIRA-like tool so that people can work with Agile.

I think it has more features as presented by PTC. However, we mainly used this solution for item management, change requests, item tracking, etc. The second thing we used it for was version control.

We have been using it because it gives certain abilities in the automotive industry, such as auditing or keeping track of information. It's still being used in many more companies, not just in mine. But I think that we can also replace it with other tools. Its performance is not very good, because many features are not relevant in today's world. I believe it's going to be fading away from use.

To be honest, the third controller system is kind of old. There are lots of transactional changes that have not been implemented in PTC. If you have a larger project, for example, whenever you give bits and need to change 10,000 files you can just commit them. But here the work style is a little more file-based, so you'll have to take care of almost all the files individually. It's not a single commit like you do here, but rather you have to allocate time for each component or file that you want to check-in or commit. That's a very big issue.

It's moderately user-friendly. There are some functions that are missing, for example, copying the path of a file in the versioning system. That one has been implemented by adding a button that we programmed it in our company to do so. That's just an example. There are more features that should have been there for a better user experience. So our hesitation has been at this point in user experience.

It is also very hard to connect this solution with other tools or integrate it with other tools.

Scalability depends a lot on the infrastructure because for-profit companies use it very well and very easily, but sometimes this is on top of good infrastructure. The network is a must whenever you want to use it, because otherwise you will have many problems like we have now. We are in a remote place of the company. We are not in the company's main country. So we're trying to update across our borders. The tool does not work very well with low quality infrastructures.

You will have to invest in the infrastructure and resources on the server-side to make it work.

They don't really have good technical support.

The online community is also somehow missing. Very few people are still using it or posting about it online. If you have an issue that you want to resolve without contacting PTC, you'll have trouble finding people online to watch that can teach you how to use it.

Technical support on their side was a little bit harsh. I was involved directly in discussions with them when talking about Agile and Agile tools. We didn't receive much help from their side on this topic.

If I'm working at a company this is done automatically by deploying an installation tool. When you receive the computer, you get it with PTC installed, so I can't possibly know if it's hard or not.

I don't have access to this information but I heard it is very high.

I would rate this as five out of ten. You can use it for things from the previous decade. After 2010, whatever you want to do in terms of programming is very unusable.

All the features are valuable, including:

• NPI
• Requirement management
• Test management
• Project management
• Defect management
• Source and configuration management
• Review and audit management
• Agile

• This tools improve teams productivity, a lot of flexibility for automation.
• One admin can manage multiple servers with the same configuration.
• If a team is doing off line testing, then 2,500 test results can be updated in two and a half minutes, meaning a saving of 40 man-hours when compared to users updating results manually.

Usability, and the human factor, and if they improve this then i would rate this 10/10.

I've been using it for seven years. Alongside Subversion, I have managed and deployed following tools:

• SVN (one year- Deployment across organization globally)
• MKS/Integrity/MKS Integrity/PTC Integrity (for the last seven years for the entire ALM (V model/Agile))

I have also evaluated other ALM tools and supporting applications:

• JIRA (Evaluation along with Greenhopper Plugin)
• Mingal (for Agile)
• Doors
• Clearcase
• Fisheye
• Crucible
• Many other online tool

No issues as such, it was very smooth.

It's highly stable when compared to other tools I have evaluated.

There's no issues, as this is an enterprise-level tool.

7/10.

7/10.

I previously used another tool but the business changed to Subversion because of the features it offered.

It was straightforward.

I implemented it without any vendor support, but I asked the vendor to evaluate our deployment and solution.

Again, this depends on the team size and and future prospects. I would say on average $70,000 (this may be on the low side but is also based on the business requirement), but minimum cost is $30,000-$36k,000. One person can manage more than seven integrity application servers, not considering development and support.

• SVN
• JIRA
• Contur
• Doors
• Mingal
• GreenHopper
• ClearCase

There are so many factors which you have to consider before you decide on a tool. In conclusion, if the project duration is short, the team size is less, then go with an open source low cost solution. Otherwise, if the project duration is long term, and the team size is big, then go with a COT integrated tool suite.

Requirements management, verification testing management, historical tracking and versioning

Eventually it should help the organization precisely document the history of requirement and testing artifact development and use.

The GUI is archaic, the program has many levels of complexity, and the time and commitment required for implementation are extreme.

Six months

I am writing this review because I don't think there's a fair portrayal online of how cumbersome the GUI is, and how difficult the software is to use.

It is extremely configurable, and has many, many features, but many of those features (for example, outputting data and reports) are extremely complex. The marketing hype says that data/content can be exported easily to Word or Excel files, but it requires understanding a 100 page manual, configuring the server and exporter add-in, a thorough understanding of HTML, XML, CSS and much more. Similarly it is boasted that you can easily generate reports and charts, but configuring and modifying reports and charts requires a great deal of training and expertise.

No. The product is powerful and stable.

No, and we don't expect any. These are known product strengths.

General company customer service is poor, but Gold Level service (additional purchase) is very, very good.

Again, purchased tech support is Excellent.

No. But some of our employees have experience with similar products (such as DOORS). Their experience with other products was that they also were complex and difficult.

After 6 months we are still rather dependent. At the outset we did not understand that we would need a full-time admin for implementation, and we expect we'll still need at least half-time admin at the one-year mark.

Vendor rep. He had high level of expertise. After 4 months of learning and experience our primary software user left the company taking much of knowledge capital with him.

So far, way in the red.

I cannot divulge details. The software itself is a fraction of implementation and training costs so far.

Yes, and we had an outside company help evaluate the options also. I would argue that we were enchanted by configurability and range of features, and did not discover until too-late, the *surprisingly high* level of difficulty and steep learning curve.

I am not a person who normally would submit a review, but I have not been able to find any fair portrayals online of the level of difficulty involved. One programmer I spoke with recently exclaimed "Why did the company buy the software if it takes months of configuration and programming just to implement?"

I believe the manufacturer would be well advised to at least upgrade PTC Integrity to have features that would have been considered standard in 2007.

We use PTC Integrity for version control purposes.

The product has efficient and powerful features.

The product requires a learning curve. For complex businesses, the internal templates could have more flexibility and compatibility. Our maintenance team finds it challenging to customize some functions. It could be user-friendly.

We have been using PTC Integrity for several years.

PTC Integrity has good stability.

We have 50 PTC Integrity users in our organization. It is a salable product.

We receive technical support from a third-party vendor.

Our maintenance team implements the product with the help of some consultants.

The product is expensive. They should improve the pricing.

I rate PTC Integrity an eight out of ten. It was a good solution five years back. However, at the moment, it does not have the latest technology. I advise others to evaluate new products as well.