IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs Polarion ALM comparison

IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs. Polarion ALM

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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 Workflow Ma...

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

10th

Average Rating

6.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Configuration Management (3rd)

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Workflow Management is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.7%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

Featured Reviews

Suvajit Chakraborty

Manager, Digital Engineering at Harman International

Offers good traceability elements but UI needs improvement

There is room for improvement in the UI. The UI has to improve a lot compared to the competitive tools, like Atlassian Jira, for example. It's very easy to use. It is easy to manage and easy to use. Anybody can learn it right quickly and start with it. But IBM ELM is something where somebody has to have good knowledge, training, and understanding and then only start using it. But there's a big known knowledge curve for IBM ELM. But once that is there, it's normally; organizations do have their own internal team to basically manage it IBM ELM portfolio, the tool chain. So if they have internal teams who are doing it for quite some time, not something new, then it is definitely better. But if there's if somebody is starting new, definitely there is a knowledge curve time it can take at least a year or maybe a couple of years before they can start realizing the benefits.

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Dina Bindi

Information and Communication technology at CNH Industrial

Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility

It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool provides traceability and reporting, which are important for compliance and measuring progress."

"Agile templates give us a standard methodology for every Agile project. Also, the ability to create our own object types and linkages to features/epics allows us to enhance the verification of feature readiness."

"All of the features work together to provide a powerful holistic solution - from the dashboard all the way through to security."

"Good for managing stories, sprints, hydration and releases."

"It was an all-in-one solution for source code, integrated source control, defect tracking, and project planning."

"We can track the status of test cases (passed or saved) in a single view. Based on releases and other attributes, we generate various reports and extract metrics from the data."

"The most valuable features of the solution are highly customizable reports and visibility for all the higher management."

"The tool provides traceability and reporting, which are important for compliance and measuring progress."

More IBM Engineering Workflow Management pros

"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."

"It is a very stable solution."

"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."

"It offers good performance."

"It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective."

"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."

"The technical support is quite good."

"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

"Some administrative tasks are difficult to perform. These could be simplified."

"Improved graphics in terms of metrics and connectivity to SharePoint from Microsoft products would be beneficial."

"Teams need clearer pictures of resource availability in charts and dashboards along with plans."

"It's becoming less relevant. For example, Maven has evolved, and in its later versions, there are plugins for integrating with source control systems, such as Git-based systems. Support for these plugins is diminishing."

"We have encountered issues with stability. We have seen where the entire system kind of goes for a toss when certain people use certain types of queries, which are very costly. Then the system kind of slows down a bit, and we have to monitor it."

"The solution is very heavily vendor dependent."

"If you have multiple projects on one server, the tool becomes very slow, and some reports take longer to load."

"Lacks ability to customize and reporting can be slow."

More IBM Engineering Workflow Management cons

"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."

"The user interface is not yet optimized."

"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."

"Test management lacks an automated process."

"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."

"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."

"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."

"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an expensive investment to make, so the decision should be driven on individual requirements."

"Licensing: The solution cost is high and should be brought down to increase competition."

"It is not a free tool. We use a token-based licensing model, which is specific to IBM. The cost per token is around $115-$120."

"I've heard IBM Engineering Workflow Management is more expensive than other tools."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."

"The solution is expensive."

"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."

"It is an expensive product."

"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."

"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

18%

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

27%

Computer Software Company

13%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

We can track the status of test cases (passed or saved) in a single view. Based on releases and other attributes, we generate various reports and extract metrics from the data.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

I've heard IBM Engineering Workflow Management is more expensive than other tools. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.

What needs improvement with IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

Improved graphics in terms of metrics and connectivity to SharePoint from Microsoft products would be beneficial.

What do you like most about Polarion ALM?

It is a very stable solution.

What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?

The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates. Sometimes, database migrations take too long, spanning two...

What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?

As a manual tester, I use Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) for our weekly builds validation. These builds are crucial as they eventually lead to final release builds for customers. I...

Jira vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Comparisons

Compared 57% of the time

Endevor vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 13% of the time

Codebeamer vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 13% of the time

GitLab vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Engineering Workflow Management Competitors

Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM

Compared 30% of the time

Jira vs Polarion ALM

Compared 22% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM

Compared 14% of the time

Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM

Compared 8% of the time

PTC Integrity vs Polarion ALM

Compared 6% of the time

More Polarion ALM Competitors

Product Reports

IBM Engineering Workflow Management

Download IBM Engineering Workflow Management product report

IBM Engineering Workflow Management report

Polarion ALM

Download Polarion ALM product report

Also Known As

IBM Rational Team Concert (IBM ALM), IBM RTC

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Overview

IBM Engineering Workflow Management manages plans, tasks, the project status and acts as the critical link between required and delivered work. It provides flexibility to adapt to any process, which enables companies to adopt faster release cycles and manage dependencies across both small and complex development projects. This solution offers no-charge server software and flexible pricing models. It becomes a complete IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management solution—when purchased as a set of seamlessly integrated tools: IBM Engineering Workflow Management, IBM Engineering Test Management, and IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next.

IBM

The world’s first 100% browser-based ALM enterprise solution, which enables seamless collaboration across disparate teams, multi-directionally linked work items, full traceability, accelerated productivity and automated proof of compliance.

Siemens

Sample Customers

Telstra Corporation, Visteon, Atos SE, Panasonic Automotive Systems, IBM Global Technology Services, CareCore National, JTEKT Corp., ItaÒ BBA, Avea, CACEIS, Danske Bank Group, APIS IT

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group

IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs. Polarion ALM