IBM Engineering Test Management Reviews

We create test cases, and then we need to plan a new task plan feature from the existing task case file and execute the test results, which will be saved in RQM. So that is how we are using the tool every day. So if one day we go to the office and find out we have been signed out, we cannot do anything.

The one feature that has not allowed us to switch to any other solution is the integration with functional testing.

IBM Rational has the RFT, which is rational functional testing. We do test automation with rational functional testing. So after we do that, we can put in all the code, then I can build it, then put all the test cases, and put all the build code for the shared location. And then rational that shared location means that RQM has access to the shared location. So, when we execute, if a test case is automated, we can run it from RQM. We need to have the environment ready for it to execute.

Once we have that, then we can select the task case. So, by clicking on one button, the other environment is automatically plugged in. Then test results will be automatically transferred back to our RQM. So, in RQM, we can view it, and it is integrated. So we can run the test and the automation from RQM, and the test results will come back. Azure DevOps first test case is there, but then we tried to use Selenium to do half automation. Still, we realized that it wouldn't have the integration. We could do something in the pipeline, but it fires the Selenium test automation code. But then the test results won't be brought back or added to AzureDesk DevOps. That's something that I do hope that there can be another other system that can have this kind of integration.

RQM can be improved because it's not related to our server and could be faster. We need to find out how much database storage is needed and keep increasing it. We heard that the latest version of RQM can clean up some old ones and give the same test result. But that one feature we are yet to use. It's a setting that we can set up, and then it goes automatically or gives me the choice to do it manually.

I have been using the solution since 2019.

It is a stable solution. We did face some issues, but it was on the server side. As long as the server is set right, then it has been good.

It is a scalable solution. We have one project where I have over 3,000 test cases, and two thousand are automated. So far, it has been good.

The customer service and support team has been good. Initially, it took some time for them to plan, but I wonder if it happened because I asked too many questions. Recently, at the end of the two years, they have been pretty fast in replying to my ticket.

Positive

Before using IBM, we used Stoneridge, Word, or Excel to keep track of the test cases.

I think it's a good and enterprising one. It's good for some people, and some say it is expensive. But for me, I have to say I don't consider finance because that's not my level, but from a usability perspective, I think it is good.

I am a tester, so I use this solution from a testing point of view. 

RQM is something that we use everyday, so it has to be up and running, otherwise we would lose everything. 

I like the tracking in the solution. 

In a test plan, all of the test cases are flat and there's no hierarchy in it. It would be helpful if we could assign a hierarchy to a group of test cases. Instead of using a test suite or child test plan, I would like to have sessions. For example, we could have a session for eFax fixes, a session for regression, and sessions for new feature testing. I would like to have some hierarchy in it.

I think the solution takes a lot of database space. It has some requirements on the server. Sometimes when there is a lot of information needed, it starts to slow down. I know that there is a way to improve the performance and make some changes on the server side.

The technical support has been pretty good. I would rate it as a five out of five. 

Positive

We haven't used the full functionality of the solution yet. We have only used the tracking for a couple of the applications. We haven't used it widely. We are expecting to upgrade the solution and we may use it more after upgrading.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. 

I primarily use RQM to create, execute, and automate test cases and store results.

RQM's best features are integration with test automation and performance testing.

RQM could be improved by adding a feature that allows test requirements to be selected when creating a task plan. I would also like to see a feature where you can have a test plan with manual and automated test cases, and the automated ones can be added into the pipeline so they can be invoked after deployment.

I've been using Rational Quality Manager for three years.

RQM's stability is pretty good.

I would give RQM a rating of nine out of ten.

We are a consultancy and we use this solution to create a testing plan, that includes test cases, for our clients. It is part of a larger suite of tools that includes Rational Functional Tester, which helps to automate the process.

The most valuable feature is the RFT because it allows us to automate manual test cases. We can do mainframe automation as well as web-based automation.

Adding support for uploading a collection of test cases would be a helpful addition. As it is now, we cannot upload a set of test cases, and instead, have to create it manually. Being able to upload hundreds of test cases would save us time, but it needs to be fast. For example, if 10 users are writing 100 tests case in a day, then uploading them should not take more than a minute.

I have been working with IBM Rational Quality Manager for the past four years.

This is a stable solution.

In our organization, we have 4,000 users and we don't have any issues. If we add more users then IBM will not have any problem scaling.

The technical support from IBM is very good.

In the past four years, I have not personally needed to contact them.

I did not work with another similar solution prior to this one.

The initial setup is very easy for our team. It will take us half an hour.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it to manage the testing. We have both manual and automated testing and we have many teams in DHL IT services that are designing some solutions. It's part of the whole life cycle. So they implement that and then test it. We adopt more and more Agile or DevOps practices, like Scrum or Kanban, and as a part of that, the work which is implemented is tested.

Historically we did a lot more manual tasks but more and more we are automating the tests and using the automation. We trigger some test automation tools from Rational Quality Manager. For example, we use Selenium or Micro Focus Quick Test Professional, or QTP. These aren't typical but we also trigger integration tests. For example, the Rational Integration Tester is triggered by RQM as well.

Integration with the other professional tools is a very strong advantage so that we can have a traceability between the requirements and defects in Rational Team Concert. That's the most important aspect.

I think it's fine from a performance perspective but usability is something that needs improvement. It might be because of the complexity. They introduce some entities before people learn how these entities link to each other. It's not intuitive. Tools like JIRA qTest are much more intuitive, for example. Quality Center is simple as well.

I have been using IBM Rational Quality Manager for five years. 

It's very stable.

It's scalable. We didn't have any scalability issues.

We have contacted their support many times. The IBM support was good. It's not perfect, sometimes it's not so fast.

I would say the initial setup is not easy but it's not super complex. We have Enterprise Deployment Topology so we have mounted servers and it's not so simple to set up the whole infrastructure. Upgrading is quite complex. Compared to JIRA, it's more complex to set up. We had to use IBM to help us.

Consider the introduction of the tool in terms of the proper education of the teams who will adapt it. I think any introduction of such a tool requires proper training. It's not so intuitive that people can trust it. If you just give it to people directly, without any training, then they can get it wrong. Make sure to invest in training

Smooth integration with JIRA, but I think this is not realistic.

The IBM suite is kind of independent and it's getting more niche because it's not such a big community of users.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

The product is very fast.

It's very reliable as a solution.

The solution is well structured and you can customize it within your business workflows.

It's very fast coming from a banking interface tool, as far as the testing environment and the test tool are concerned.

Currently, the user interface needs to be more user-friendly.  

In one of IBM's main competitors, Quality Center, the options are much more straightforward than what is offered in IBM. IBM's platform is too complicated and should be simple like Quality Center's. 

The integration and enhancement features need to be across all the testing tools and there needs to be integration between them.

The solution should simplify the import or export as well as support multiple extensions.

Overall, the solution is not user-friendly, and you need a very technical person on it in order to run it properly.

I've been working with this tool for a number of years, and with IBM solutions in general for about eight or so years so far.

The solution is very reliable and stable.

I believe the solution is scalable. 

We've been in touch with technical support. They are pretty good. However, I don't hear from the clients about how they feel about the solution's technical support in any way. We've found them to be good, at least for us, from our interactions with them in the past. 

Clients often ask about monthly licensing fees, however, I'm not sure about how IBM actually charges. For example, I'm unsure as to if it's a yearly or a monthly fee. It's unclear from my end how the solution actually contracts out its licenses. 

We've compared the solution to other tools such as HP's Quality Center. 

The main competitor of IBM's test management tool is Quality Center. I feel they may have a more user-friendly interface.

However, IBM offers a very good management tool and it's integrated well with the different tracking and design testing solutions. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

From a reliability and scalability perspective, it's a good tool. It's well-structured. If they did some upgrades to the interface, it would be just about perfect and I'd rate it closer to nine or nine and a half.

Reusability and integration capabilities which make it a great choice for organizations that use a variety of development tools and platforms.

The software lets users register their role and create task or test-specific teams, and it allows users to assign each other tasks and view the status of the assigned tasks.

Mainly Quality Assurance and DevOps, but of course the whole company and management areas with more knowledge of quality and client success approach.

At least 10 years.

Few configuration issues on different browsers, not that serious.

Yes, I had some, but after sending requests to the IBM support team, some fixes were applied and we could keep going.

No, always thinking of sizing, we can keep the services online.

Very good, attention and velocity to understand and solve issues.

Very good, attention and velocity to understand and solve issues.

No.

For the CLM tools, IBM provides a good 'automatic setup', but on the WebSphere side, there is a lot of complex configuration to attend the services.

There were a lot of projects. Many of them through a vendor, some as an IBM employee and few as a consultant, in-house.

Always delivered with high expertise.

Good to high.

There are various licensing and pricing options available for the software, so organizations should be sure to contact IBM to decide which license best serves their needs. Each license includes 12 months of customer support. A free 90-day trial of the software is also available.

HPE Quality and some others.

It is a very good choice on ensuring the expected software quality for projects.

• Ease and clarity of the tool when using it. Easy web-based administration.
• Highly customizable
• Rational Quality Manager (RQM) when used with other CLM tools (provided by IBM) gives great traceability features.
• Latest features include versioning of testings which can be great when used for multiple releases of a product.

• Instead of writing test scripts, we now use a tool which makes managing extremely easy.
• Testing can be linked with requirements, which makes traceability very easy.

Integration capabilities with other vendors' tools should improve.

I have used it on and off until now (from 2011).

Yes, there are some bugs present in almost every release.

No.

Excellent. You always get the proper response.

No.

Setup is pretty straightforward. It can be a little too much for beginners, but the steps are not complex.

Never got involved in pricing, however the licenses of these tools (the whole CLM package) is very costly as compared to other vendors' tools.

We evaluated the whole package - IBM CLM, HPE ALM, and Microsoft TFS.

This tool would be great if it was used with a package (IBM CLM, includes DNG, RQM, and RTC, as major tools).

VF dashboard view looks okay. It allows user to add whichever widget (predefined) based on the need. It has integration with CCM and RM to achieve traceability.

Organizing the test cases is tedious. There is no mechanism to keep and maintain the test cases as hierarchy. This should be seriously addressed. As the number of test cases grows, it’ll be really difficult to maintain the test cases. The tool should be able to support and maintain the test cases in a folder-wise structure to identify the different module/phase-wise test cases.

Around three years.

No.

No.

Not applicable.

Yes. Customer requirement.

Not applicable.

I suggest to go for other tools. As the number of test cases grow, it’ll be really difficult to maintain the test cases. The tool should be able to support and maintain the test cases in a folder-wise structure to identify the different module test cases.

In the latest version, Global Configuration is the most promising feature as it allows the user to maintain different versions of the same artifact in different streams. Another feature that I consider important is integration with the automation tools.

Reporting on the QA activities as well as managing test execution cycles helped our organization to better manage the QA activities.

There are a couple of things that can be improved:

1. The user interface can be improved; it is the same interface that I have been seeing for the past so many years, whereas the other CLM modules changed significantly.
2. It does not provide inbuilt capabilities for managing the tasks and planning activities related to testing. For this purpose, you need to buy another module, i.e., IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC).

I have used this solution for seven years.

Recently, we encountered some defects related to the global categories. We opened the defects with IBM, and later on, they provided us with a fix pack.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support is above average.

The setup was a bit complex as it requires some expertise.

Two types of licensing policies are available:

1. There is the Authorized license which is bound to the user, i.e., if the user is not using it, then others can't use it either.
2. There is floating one, which is a pool of licenses (if the user is not using it, then others can use it).

When I joined my current organization, they were already using IBM RQM.

Tweak your testing process. It is also better to align the organization in terms of how the tool works.