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Atlassian ALM vs IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 30, 2025

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

Atlassian ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Engineering Lifecycle M...
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
13th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Atlassian ALM is 1.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 3.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

ZX
Scrum board feature is highly valuable and handles different user volumes
We have both small-sized and big-sized customers. The small ones generally have around 50 to 200 users. The larger ones, for example, in China, have around 15,000 platform users. So, the number of small companies is high, but the total business value comes from the big companies. Atlassian ALM can handle different user volumes. For customers with more than 500 users, we recommend deploying a high availability (HA) architecture. The solution supports both single-node and HA modes. I would rate the scalability a five out of ten. It could be better in terms of scalability with more users. It could be improved to better handle larger numbers of users. We have clients using Atlassian ALM both in China and globally. We have around 20 clients using this solution.
Harold Pogue - PeerSpot reviewer
A complex deployment that is not stable, but is cloud-based
The team of 15 to 20 software engineers uses IBM Rational ALM and Jira for testing. They coupled different online packages together because the Duration Enterprise was impossible to use IBM Rational ALM did not help the organization and we ended up moving to another solution. The most valuable…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the Scrum board."
"The main power of this tool is the integration between the different products of the Atlassian suite. We have good integration with work management with Java. This is the major strength from this provider."
"This solution fits very well into our agile product management environment."
"We have something called the GC (global configuration), which is a unique feature compared to any other competitor we have in the ALM space."
"The cataloging is a very valuable feature. For a lot of enterprises, they end up not knowing which applications do specific features. The cataloging helps with this. It's not that verbose, but it still gives you allowances to put in more detail."
"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."
"Everyone in a team can work on the same platform and share the same information."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting of the CPU usage on the dashboard."
"It's easy to use."
"The planning feature is rich with Scrum concepts: Sprint, Sprint retrospective, the rules in the Scrum framework."
"It is relatively easy to use and user-friendly once the setup is complete."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the high-level project management."
"The reports are not really customizable, which is something that they should improve on."
"The automation for scheduling software and doing software tests should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid."
"The GUI is a little bit outdated."
"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."
"There is not enough beginner support material in the form of FAQs or simple training to help you get started."
"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."
"The interconnectivity between packages is a major support problem and can be improved."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"The directory designer manager is uncivil. The design manager is clearly really unstable."
"The user interface requires significant improvement as it is overly complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a community edition available, but if the price were lower for the addons then more people would use the full version."
"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."
"The solution is not cheap."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Atlassian ALM?
The most valuable feature is the Scrum board.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlassian ALM?
The pricing is on the higher side. I would give it an eight out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high.
What needs improvement with Atlassian ALM?
There is room for improvement in the high-level project management. In future releases, I would like to have a planning feature for high-level project management.
What needs improvement with IBM Rational ALM?
The user interface requires significant improvement as it is overly complex. For business users with no experience in IT, it can be particularly challenging to understand the UI and create test cas...
What is your primary use case for IBM Rational ALM?
We use IBM Rational ALM as part of our overall application suite for our manufacturing company. It is used by our engineering team to capture requirements, perform testing, and manage defects. Spec...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, NASA, Cisco, eBay, Redfin, Toyota, Kaiser Permanente, Gilt, CSIRO, Autodesk, The Daily Telegraph, CODE, Illumnia
Tennis Australia, WeCloud AB, Port Otago Limited, Logicalis US, Valmer, The Chevrolet Volt, Ashurst
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian ALM vs. IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.