IBM DOORS Reviews

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.

The most valuable features were the structural flexibility of the documents and ability to specify the type of link between them. It was possible to organize a group of collections within a project, a group of modules together in a collection and a group of artifacts together in a module or a variation of that. Additionally, it was easy to design links to any of the previously mentioned entities in a variety of defined relationships.

This product improved the amount and accessibility of formalized documentation surrounding business processes. It also helped bridge the gap between business and technical documentation requirements which was a priority when trying to rebuild our CRM system using vendors in several different time zones.

In the future, I would like to see a better interactive table of contents or index page that updates in or close to real-time. As the repository grows, it becomes harder and harder to keep track of all the moving parts that contribute to the system as a whole.

I used Rational DOORS for approximately nine months during 2014 on a fairly consistent basis.

The predominant issue that was encountered was connecting Rational DOORs to Rational Software Architect. Although these two products were meant to work in conjunction with each other that never came to fruition. The result was creating a workaround by saving image files that couldn’t be automatically updated and caused the database to time out as the repository grew.

I would not rate the level of customer service and technical support very highly. Response times were high and self-serve help via their website was hard to follow for non-technical users.

No previous solution was used.

The traceability matrix along with the linking of software design with requirements. We are also using it for test management, so it provides bi-directional linking between requirements, design, and test cases.

Previously we were not using any requirements management tools, or maintaining different types of requirements (i.e. customer, system, software, test cases) in our process defined templates. It gets a bit tricky for organizations divided over time zones if you're not using any proper management tools like DOORS. It helps us to standardize the way our globally distributed teams are now collaborating and managing the different artifacts.

The Import and Export feature. Additional templates and options should be made available, and it should be more intuitive along with giving users more options for control. Also, I believe it should give more options for database support instead of supporting default databases that different companies are using for productions. This would mean users will be at ease if maintaining different databases for different production activities.

I have been working on this for almost three and a half years in parallel to other IBM Rational tools.

There were some issues during the import and export using the GUI, and although scripting works well, not all users are accustomed to using DXL scripts.

Not really, but sometimes it crashes when running DXL scripts that have a number of errors. In that case it’s not possible to rule out the cause of trouble.

The solution is quite adaptable to encapsulate the growing needs of organizations in terms of growth, new functionalities, and enhancement.

I have worked in the past with one of IBM Rational DOORS partner companies, so overall they are quite supportive, and at a par depending upon the complexity of the rising issue.

8.5/10 - sometimes if you forget to mention the level of complexity they become little at ease replying to your mail, but overall it’s good to have this kind of support.

No, not any kind of requirements management solution. We were managing requirements in the form of our own Microsoft Word defined templates. Management of requirements for our globally distributed teams in a centralized location was a prime driving force for the change.

It's simple to setup the complete environment. Linking with external applications is also friendly. We are using Rational Directory Server for our user management and Rational Change for change management, so the integration configuration was somewhat easy without much trouble.

We did an In-house deployment and configuration, with own local ICT and Tools and Methodologies engineer.

Pricing is on the higher side because of multiple users who want to make use of the great functionality of tools.

Single tool licensing is good, but again it's costly, and with respect to extensions like DWA, DNG, and others, it becomes even more critical for companies who do not have high end budgets.

It’s a good choice to invest money in, and will definitely prove to be value for money, even more if it's not utilized to the best possible extent. Proper planning on board will definitely prove to be beneficial.

We have different generations of all products. It lets us select and see unique attributes for each release or generation. You can use attributes to define a selection area to see which equipments are for the old versions and which ones are for the new versions. This inbuilt view is what I like in IBM Rational DOORS. So, for a database and a set of requirements, it will select and show unique attributes for a release or a generation.

Complexity, performance, openness are the three areas that can be improved. The IBM architecture and specifically Jazz looks more complex. There are a lot of servers. It's quite complicated. 

The search capabilities lack in IBM Rational DOORS Classic for customers who have a database with a requirement of more than 25,000 records. For example, you can search easily for a module, but it's really difficult to look for keywords through the whole database because all the modules are separated into small components, which makes the search quite complex. This is something that's really annoying because when we want to make an impact analysis, we would like to analyze the product globally.

It's quite difficult to manage. The fact that you can interact externally with data makes it complex. The approach is complex and doesn't work as expected. For example, when I tried to experiment with exporting some records, the tool crashed, but I couldn't find out the root cause, that is, whether it happened because of Rational Windows or lack of memory. It was just crashing. Logs weren't very clear. 

IBM can try to use more recent technology for different aspects and make it easy. They can also provide free integration from DOORS Classic to DOORS. Currently, all the customization in Excel is lost, which makes it very complex. It would be a feature to make new versions compatible with features in the past versions.

Actively, I would say three years and non-actively, maybe five years. I was working in the QA department, and I was reviewing and validating the main equipment with IBM Rational DOORS. So, I know the tool, but it took a bit longer before I start to work much more actively with IBM Rational DOORS.

We discovered some tech stability issues with IBM Rational DOORS Classic and did not convert to IBM. I'm not really convinced about the solution. Basically, IBM doesn't really support or doesn't want to improve IBM Rational DOORS Classic anymore. However, there are still a lot of customers who have been using this solution for years, some of them even for 13 years or so. 

I'm not sure about the support for other solutions, but the problem is that they don't really want to invest any more in IBM Rational DOORS classic. It's quite easy for a technical person to customize and do benchmarking to identify the root cause and proposed solution, but I think that IBM is not going in that direction. So, I'm not really happy. 

They are quick at replying for sure. However, I'm not really convinced about the solution, so I would expect to have a technical person who is experienced and find solutions. 

When I discovered and reported a performance issue, I got a reply that it is a well-known problem. I never saw that issue in the report. It looks like some of the bug information is not accessible to everybody.

I managed to install it without any serious or issues, so it was quite okay. I had a lot of exceptions at different moments, but I managed to find solutions on the web. 

IBM is a bit too expensive in terms of pricing. Customers are paying a lot for the license, and the price is quite high for this kind of environment. It is quite high as compared to what we can get today with other solutions. 

I am validating this solution. I still have a lot of solutions that look promising, such as Jama and Polarion. 

I'm more concerned about the effort to extract the system and to train people. In the world of requirement management, usability is really important from a UAT factor. Some other solutions have a better user interface, and they are easier to understand than IBM Rational DOORS in general. Even though I have experience in IBM Rational DOORS and I'm quite familiar with DOORS concepts, I find other solutions, such as Jama or Polarion, easier to use.

Our requirement is not for a huge database, just around 30,000 records. It's a shame that IBM Rational DOORS Classic is so slow in accessing such a small number of records. It's really new to the data architecture approach from the past, that is, from Telelogic.

In the new version, they no longer support Excel. So, we have to redo the whole configuration of the project, which takes a lot of time and energy. When I look at other solutions based on the results of the benchmark analysis, they look easier to work or install.

I'm also looking into the capability to export, and I got several issues with IBM, especially with the OSAC interface. There are some questions on the IBM website to assess whether it will really work or whether it is a limitation. Because it is not a well-defined limitation, you have to try. When you try and spend a lot of time and energy and do extra work, you find the limitations in what you can do, which makes it very slow.

In the past, IBM Rational DOORS was the best solution for me because it was the only one but today, people are not really attached to IBM Rational DOOR. They have to use it, but I'm not convinced that they're really attached to it.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten. It is complex, doesn't work as expected, and isn't easy to illustrate. I would expect IBM to have something better prepared, better integrated, and more compatible with I could do in the past.

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.

The ability to link objects is most valuable, because this provides the traceability from the customer requirements to our product requirements, and ultimately our test results.

As the product development lifecycle progresses, DOORS helps to maintain the traceability as requirements change (base-lining), and as new requirements emerge.

The most difficult feature of DOORS is how it creates "DOORS tables" from tables that are imported from a Word document. There are ways to address this, but describing them in detail here would take up too much space. Workarounds include using embedded OLE objects of Excel spreadsheets or using an image of the table if it is a small one that is unlikely to change.

I've used it for 10 years.

Remote users, that access the network via a VPN, may encounter a bit of sluggishness maneuvering through the database - but that may depend on the speed of the network and the size of the database. There are ways to address this issue.

DOORS stability is quite reliable.

No issues encountered.

Excellent! IBM Rational DOORS team have always been quick to respond and knowledgeable about any issues I may have presented them.

Excellent, as well. Very knowledgeable.

Prior to IBM Rational DOORS, I've used a SLATE database to track requirements. It wasn't as user-friendly and at the time we switched to DOORS, the decision was based on what our customers were using to track their requirements. DOORS was the better choice and is still the most recognized tool for requirement traceability.

The initial setup was straightforward, thanks to the robust help files that IBM has maintained as a library that is accessible both inside the tool (Help button) and via the internet (on the IBM site). Aside from that, technical support was available as needed - even to the extent that phone support can be provided.

We used our own in-house team.

As the product life-cycle reaches maturity for a given project, the ability to re-use requirements, and their related data in other projects is very helpful. DOORS is also a great tool for discovering "orphan" requirements early in the cycle, as well.

IBM Rational will work with you if you decide to use DOORS. The support provided by the vendor is excellent.

We use DOORS to document system requirements and inherit customer equirement maintain standard and conformity. It helps in traceability of requirements and restricts changes to requirements by anyone. In order to make changes to the requirements, one needs RCR (Requirements change request) which would be reviewed and approved before applying changes. It would help in impact analysis and version tracking.

It is a great tool for requirement gathering and elicitation. It brings all the business analysts in a team on the same page as everyone has the same understanding on requirements.The traceability to system requirements, customer requirement and test cases helps all teams to reference each other's work in an easier manner.

IBM DOORS has helped in keeping requirements wording and structure standard across all customer documents. It's export functionality helps in producing quality requirements with ease within short time frame. This helped in supporting multiple clients at the same time with lesser chances of errors.

• The product is less configurable in terms of Menu options. The replication of data is not as easy as excel across the rows/columns. In order to replicate, the user needs to go to each cell and make the change
• Upon losing connection to VPN/internet, DOORS can lose the content written and this requires it to be redone. The product should at least send a notification to the user about lost connections to avoid rework
• The images added in DOORS are not exported easily in word documents. They do not scale as expected

I used the tool for two years.

The software came pre-installed with the machine but DOORS upgrade took long time. It slows the machine and additional RAM is required on machines with DOORS.

Customer service is good as we got an IBM consultant to fix issues or code, but his support is limited to minor bugs. Major enhancements and bugs had to be escalated and sent to IBM which had a longer turn around time.

I have used HP Quality Center but DOORS provides better standardization and maintainability of requirements.

It was straightforward as it came pre-installed on my company machine.

It was through a vendor team. The implementation and training was smooth, but the enhancements and bug fixing took long time.

It is an expensive software but worth the spending for a larger firm which require standards across customers.

I was not offered any other option. The company has used this tool for years for requirement gathering and maintenance.