IBM DOORS Reviews

We use the solution internally in our organization.

The product creates an ID for each requirement update. It is very detailed. The product enables users to divide the requirements and export them. So, I need not give my customers access to my database. They can review it and send it back. The next-generation features are good.

The customer must also have the tool to import the changes and accept them as a part of the review. It is a disadvantage to us if the customer does not use the tool.

I have been using the solution for two years.

We do a lot of testing compared to other companies. We face a lot of downtime, even for a normal website. There are a lot of bugs, but the vendor has not solved anything yet.

The initial setup was difficult. My organization did the deployment. Online licensing includes a lot of processes that I am not aware of. Once the organization installed the solution, I requested an additional license. It is difficult to use the tool. The solution is deployed on my laptop. I have an internal link to access the product and GUI.

The licensing cost is too high.

If I had considered the latest next-generation features, it would have been easier for me. I'm not a full-time requirement engineer. I am exploring other tools. My organization decides which tools to use. Overall, I rate the tool a six out of ten.

We use IBM Rational DOORS for listing requirements. It's a very powerful software for that. All of the specifications for the project are put inside, and then you can link them to all the documents, architecture, and disciplines.

It's a very interesting tool. I like that it's simple. You have to create your document, add your templates, and have your headings and definitions, and it's done. You must attribute the discipline and fill out the comment field for requirements. It also provides you with unique IDs for each requirement. I like that it never duplicates IDs.

It could be more user-friendly. It's not a beautiful tool. The user interface is gray. It has only lists inside, and it's horrible when you want to add tables. It's tough to add tables and manage them. It also becomes difficult when you want to add images.

I have been using IBM Rational DOORS for about four years.

IBM Rational DOORS is a stable solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give stability an eight.

IBM Rational DOORS is a scalable solution. We have 10,000 to 15,000 people at our company. We have about 30 people on our team, but many other users also have access to it. Maybe 100 people access my project.

We used to use both Microsoft Word and Excel. We created tables and wrote everything inside. We switched because of trustability, versioning, and processability. In Excel, I am the only one who can modify it, or no one will be able to trace it.

We implemented this solution ourselves. We have special engineer for that.

We have to pay for a license. I think it's a one-time payment as my company hasn't notified me about more charges. I don't think it's expensive for large corporations, but it will be costly for an average person.

Even though it's old, it's efficient, so we are still using it and won't replace it anytime soon.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give IBM Rational DOORS a ten.

In my experience with IBM, I received initial customer requirements, which I stored in an Excel spreadsheet. These are then integrated into DOORS for comprehensive management throughout the project lifecycle, including contractual obligations with suppliers and stakeholder requirements adjustments.

The platform's traceability capabilities are invaluable. They provide a solid foundation for certification processes and manage requirement changes across project lifecycles.

Enhancing security measures, particularly when handling multiple projects simultaneously, would be beneficial to prevent data loss within DOORS.

The platform has proven stable when managing several concurrent projects.

The product is scalable, but it's crucial to ensure robust security measures when managing multiple projects simultaneously.

IBM's support services have been commendable. Their support team was responsive and helpful whenever I needed assistance managing requirements in DOORS.

Positive

IBM DOORS is more user-friendly for requirement management and offers superior traceability compared to Cradle, which has a less intuitive interface.

Setting up the platform can be complex, especially when configuring modules and building diagrams.

I rate the process a seven. 

The product generates a return on investment for large-scale projects where meticulous requirement management is critical for successful outcomes.

The licensing costs for the product are quite high.

I recommend the platform, particularly for its effectiveness in managing complex requirements.

I rate it an eight out of ten.

We capture the requirements of the clients and gain acceptance. We can also review the requirements and adjust further developments as necessary. 

The data logs are ver conveneint. 

The setup is very easy.

It is user-friendly. 

The speed lags based on the server and the remote connection.

They need to provide users with information on what options would be best for their setup. 

The export of the requirements does not allow me to see the linking of the requirements. I'd like to see some sort of visualization or flow chart so we would have an overview from a system perspective.

I've been using the solution for four years. 

You can request licenses if you need more access from more users. 

I've never contacted technical support. The setup is done, and we have cleared the requirements. We've never had any technical difficulties that needed us to reach out.

You can create a whole server inside the project. It's easy to set up. 

I wasn't directly involved with the deployment and do not know how long it takes. 

You do have to pay for a license per person. 

It is worth the money given the market options. There's good compatibility between you and your clients that makes it valuable. 

We are a customer and end-user. 

We have a server-based deployment. 

The solution has some of the most advanced features on offer, which is why we chose the solution.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It can meet the needs of any developer. However, it does lag a bit. 

IBM Rational DOORS is used as a requirements management tool. It enables you to do full requirements development and testing.

The most valuable feature of IBM Rational DOORS is the full requirements development and testing.

It would be helpful if Microsoft provided a more user-friendly interface for updating and querying updates. Additionally, if there was a way for users to notify developers of any changes in requirements, it would allow for faster and more efficient updates to the solution's architecture. This could be in the form of a notification system that alerts developers of any changes that need to be made. Additionally, the solution is document-driven and it should be more digital.

I have used IBM Rational DOORS for approximately 20 years.

I rate the stability of IBM Rational DOORS a ten out of ten.

We have two people in the company that uses the solution.

We do not have plans to increase usage. We are moving towards a more digital environment where we are using SysML and UML to write requirements instead of text-based messages. IBM Rational DOORS should have the capability to model these requirements, but currently, the add-on they have is not effective.

While a large number of requirements may be present, managing them effectively is a separate challenge. There are various tools available for managing requirements, such as IBM Rational DOORS, but they may not always be sufficient. Effective requirements management is crucial in this field.

The field of engineering is evolving, moving away from traditional methods of management, such as using tools, such as  IBM Rational DOORS to organize and allocate textual requirements. The 2018 DOD strategy for digital engineering highlights this shift towards utilizing models rather than documents in the digital environment. However, many people are still stuck in the old ways and unaware of this change. It is important to keep in mind that the new way of doing things also involves developing architectures using the modeled requirements.

I rate the scalability of IBM Rational DOORS a ten out of ten.

I rate the support of IBM Rational DOORS a ten out of ten.

I have used Excel spreadsheets prior to using IBM Rational DOORS.

The return on investment in system engineering is difficult to quantify as it primarily involves writing clear and comprehensive requirements. While a team may be dedicated to this task, measuring the return on investment can be challenging.

IBM Rational DOORS is highly expensive.

I rate IBM Rational DOORS a nine out of ten.

I use DOORS to support my customers, who are heavy users of the tool. I try to figure out what's wrong whenever they have some issues. For example, if they need some help, I use the tool to recreate my customers' environments and work with it to find solutions for them. About 10 people in my company do the same thing as me.

When you install DOORS locally, you have the flexibility to do what you want with the solution. You can add functionality and do many things that you can't do with other tools or do well enough to satisfy your users' requirements. For example, you can save linked versions when you do baselines, and then I can handle linked changes between different baselines. You can't do this with other tools, or it's hard to do.

The web application DOORS Web Access doesn't have the same functionality as the standard client, so it's not a real substitute. For example, web Access only provides writing requirements, but you can't do much more with it. If you want to change multiple attributes or something like that, it's better to use the standard client. I would also like to see some improvements in the reporting.

I've been using Rational DOORS off and on since 2001.

DOORS is stable. I have seldom have problems with it.

DOORS is a file-based data storage system, so it isn't that useful for large user communities. If they want to work with the standard client, it is crucial to have a solid connection between the client and the database software because there's a lot of communication back and forth, so the scalability is not so great. Some of my customers have installations with upwards of 100 clients. 

IBM support for DOORS is helpful and quick. You get a real solution in a short time most of the time.

Setting up DOORS is easy, and I can handle it by myself. The initial installation takes around an hour, but the total deployment depends on your environment. However, you can handle it with a remote install, and installing the client itself takes only a few minutes. 

I rate IBM Rational DOORS eight out of 10. 

I am using IBM Rational DOORS for managing engineering requirements.

IBM Rational DOORS has helped our organization because of the sense of configuration baseline. That is key for us. With it, we can create and freeze baselines, put them on the configuration control,  and then use it as evidence. 

What I like about DOORS is baselines, it's easy and I use the capability of multiple users. The traceability or links between different levels are very nice. Additionally, it is used by all of our suppliers, which brings us commonality.

One of the things that many people complain about is it's hard to manage attributes. For example, tables or figures. This is something that can be improved. 

The most important improvement for me right that is needed is based on textual structure type, which has been good, but there are new trends and more model-based are required. For that, it's outdated, it does not work well. It's outdated when it comes to model-based requirements

I have been using IBM Rational DOORS for approximately four years.

The stability of the solution is good. However, you can access the database remotely and when you have too many users, you see the performance reduces. I don't know what the exact threshold is to where the point that it starts affecting the efficiency. I know when there are too many people accessing the database simultaneously, it can get slow.

The scalability is good in the sense you are allowed to have many users, but performance-wise it will decrease if you have too many. However, it can scale in different ways for certain other requirements, it is very good. I have no issues. It's easy to manage.

We have hundreds of people using this solution, mostly in the engineering department.

This solution is being extensively being used in organizations.

I have not used technical support because whenever we have issues, we raise a ticket and the ticket is managed by our IT. If they need any higher-level solution they will contact the IBM Rational DOORS team.

We are using Siemens Teamcenter for the same usage as IBM Rational DOORS, but for different databases, they are not interconnected.

We have an IT department that does the implementation and all the maintenance of the solution.

My advice to others that want to use IBM Rational DOORS is you need to know what is the usage you want to give the solution. If any company wants to do something more mode-based oriented, I would not use IBM Rational DOORS. However, if you have a more textual requirement, IBM Rational DOORS is a good solution.

I rate IBM Rational DOORS a seven out of ten.

We use DOORS for aerospace applications. I'm a systems engineer and we are customers of IBM. 

The solution uses a custom object-oriented scripting language called DOORS Extension Language or DXL. It allows you to manipulate the software to your liking. It's very customizable and can be as powerful as you want it to be. User management is pretty straightforward and I generally enjoy using the solution. As the administrator for the program, it's very quick and easy to add a user, change permissions, rights, things like that within the software.

The software is very dated and old. It's hard to get people to use it because the GUI looks like something from one of those giant Mac computers. It's not very user-friendly and can become slow very quickly, especially if you're not on site. It's been detrimental in this recent work from home era. If you have a lot of employees working from home, DOORS will operate more slowly than if they were on site. The DXL will be very slow if you write an inefficient tool and then your client will suffer. Not everything is necessarily written by IBM software engineers who know the system well and it will slow down as you put more tools and information into it. There's a tendency for garbage accumulation which is the simplest way I can put it. Processing of images needs to be improved. 

I've been using the solution for one year. 

There are a few bugs, some of which get addressed in updates, but there are still a few that you have to fix right out of the gate. 

The product is very easy to scale, in my opinion. It will slow down as you scale, but it's the best way to handle a large project in my opinion. It can chew through something big, it just might do it slowly. We have around 500 user accounts. 

IBM can sometimes be slow and convoluted. It can take in the order of two or three weeks to really resolve a problem on the IBM side. It requires an IBM account and a lot of hoops to jump through before you can get to them on the phone and get a straightforward answer.

For anyone wanting to use this solution, it's important to take the time to learn DXL. Don't take it for granted because understanding how it works will make a big difference. 

I rate the solution six out of 10. 

We use it to manage requirements. For the defense projects, we basically do a waterfall design methodology. So, we input the customer's requirements at the top level, and we flow down through all of the design requirements and the testing requirements. We keep it all managed through DOORS.

Many of our defense customers give us the requirements in a DOOR file, so we can instantly import it. Nobody has to sit there playing with spreadsheets or anything else. In minutes, we have the requirements, and we can begin the flow down to the various levels of the design as we work on it. The thing that we like about it is the fact that it's compatible with what our defense and also space customers use.

I like the way we can simply link requirements with one another and with test descriptions and then automatically produce reports that are required to show compliance to our customers. It is a combination of requirements management and reporting that I like, but I really have very little to do with the reporting part of it. I don't know how easy or hard it is to create those reports.

One thing that I would like to see is a lower-cost version of it that we could use for smaller projects. Sometimes, we do projects for commercial customers who would benefit from something like DOORS, but it's just so expensive. It's just a monster, so a lower-cost version would be the thing that we'd like to see.

I have been using this solution on and off for about eight years.

It is incredibly stable. We've never had a problem with its stability.

In the projects we've done, we've never bumped into a limit where we needed to do anything to accommodate the project. It just works. So, we've never had to scale it.

In terms of the number of users, we're limited to about three people who use it, and they're all hardware and software engineers. 

It is being used extensively. We use it every day. We could apply it to other things. If there was a lower-cost version of it, we would probably use it more widely through our projects, so that's really more a function of the cost of the product than the usability of it. 

I didn't have any encounters with them.

DOORS is the only system we've used for this purpose. In other cases, we create massive spreadsheets that have links in them and are completely unmanageable, but they do the work.

I wasn't involved in that.

I don't personally know what the numbers are. I just know that one of the reasons we've limited it to three seats is a function of cost.

I would rate IBM Rational DOORS a 10 out of 10. The main reason is that it's what our customers use and what we've been using for many years now, and I don't see any reason to change, frankly.

We used DOORS to elicit and gather user needs and then document them. We would then document these needs with diagrams and pictures that could be used to implement products and tests. We also used it for traceability purposes.

System engineers, software requirements engineers, software development engineers, software manual test engineers, software automated test engineers, software DevOps teams — these were the people who mainly used this solution.

We went from an ad hoc Word document to a table-driven model that could be reviewed without submitting any documents. That was a big help.

This solution is the Cadillac of similar solutions. I liked that we could export to Excel and Word. We could also link to other off-shelf tools.

Compared to other tools that I have used over the past 20 years, DOORS is the best of the best. It's expensive. It's a heavy-duty tool. 

It would be nice if it could be scaled-down so that it could be installed and implemented without much learning or training. That would also make the price more attractive.

You have to pay the premium price, but if you're a startup company or a medical device company, you'll want to create traceability immediately. It's actually simpler to use it straight out-of-box. It requires a lot of administrative work. The initial setup is not very easy — at least on-premise. A lot of training is required. It should be easier to use. 

I began using this solution in 2000. I used it at my old company; I don't use it anymore.

This solution was very stable. It took our staff a while to transition from previous technology to DOORS. Otherwise, the tool itself was very stable. In the end, people saw the difference. Especially when it came to traceability from the system requirements to the product requirements, to the software requirements.

The technical support was very good. Better than Microsoft.

An implementer did the initial installation. Based on what I heard, it's not easy to install. I don't want to say it was complex, but it wasn't very easy either. It's not just like installing  Word or Microsoft Office — it wasn't that easy.

We were a big organization complete with different teams. There were some disagreements on how the tool should be set up, how the traceability should be set up, etc. These discussions delayed the delivery or the final implementation. Otherwise, it could have been set up quickly. A lot of customers made it much harder. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.

IBM DOOR is the best tool you can purchase; it's the Cadillac of all tools. Don't be scared of its vast amount of features. Use only what you need, and don't panic about the complexity or the completeness of the tool