IBM Engineering Workflow Management Reviews

Execution of the Agile software development methodology.

It gave us the platform to implement Agile methodology immediately.

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.

Upgrades, even minor versions, seem too labour intensive, especially with the enhanced objects, which is why the Jazz platform should be so good.

One to three years.

The customization features.

Transparency in project progress tracking.

RTC allows us to customize different processes to fit the best projects
requirements.

• Source management
• Widgets
• Queries
• Plans presentation

I've used this solution for four years.

No.

No.

Five out of 10.

JIRA.

Complex.

No, only RTC.

Look for guidelines and YouTube videos before starting to use RTC (too complex for new users).

E2E tool for SCM, features like customization of CR and IR flow is valuable.

We moved our entire SCM on IBM RTC and integrated IBM Rational DOORS and IBM Rational RPE.

Permission logic is a big issue as it is very difficult to provide permissions at individual level.

2+ years

No

No

No

Customer Service:

Good

Technical Support:

Good

Yes we used IBM Synergy

It was simple

It was in house

It can be realized over 5 years

Not Sure

NA

It is very complex tool and require a lot of expertise to manage. Anyone opting for IBM RTC should first get a through training

• Task planning
• The possibility to link to DNG
• Easy way to see the status of the project: What was done, why, and when.

Before RTC, the project plan was in Excel. The project lead periodically asked the team members for their updates in the plan. There was no actual status, no connection to the requirements, and nobody knew why something was done.

Team Planning in RTC

1-  RTC allows to set up parallel or overlapping iterations. It is possible, to assign a user to tasks, which are assigned to different, overlapping iterations.
For 

example, one iteration is for product A and the second one for product B and both products shall be created in the same time range, e.g. the same month.

A developer has to do some work on both products, so maybe several tasks exist, assigned to the specific iterations for both products. If a product manager now opens a plan, that is only based on the iteration of the specific product, the developer is loaded with its total capacity to this plan.

RTC ignores in this case, that there are other tasks in other parallel iterations. This may cause a user to be overbooked. IBM states this in the documentation (it is recommended to create a plan on an iteration, that is on a higher level and includes both product iterations), and warns there to use parallel iterations – but RTC does not warn when this situation occurs, so users may encounter this issue without knowing.

2-  A plan in RTC is created always when a user loads this plan, using the actual status of the work items in the plan. There is no possibility to save a state, e.g. for documentation or to create different versions, like MS Project does. 

I have been using this solution since 2013.

We did encounter stability issues, but all of them were solved by the system admins.

Sometimes there were scalability issues, but they were handled and mainly resolved by the system admins.

We started out directly with a standard process template, Scrum, and made adjustments on the run. Therefore, the start was easy.

However, later on we needed to change from the standard template to a custom template and this was somehow complex.

The pricing is supposed to be competitive.

We evaluated PTC Integrity and Polarion ALM.

• Check the planning, and see if RTC fulfills all of your needs.
• Check if your other tools can connect to RTC.
• RTC does not come with many interfaces. However, OSLC and an internal API are what you can program for your interfaces for your tools.
• It may be necessary to migrate your existing data from another SCM tool, or for the standard process flow afterwards. It is nice to have some automated helpers which create and update work items for the user.

I really value the links from stories/defects to code via the tasks and change sets.

• We’ve used it to drive our move to DevOps primarily because the CI tools were pre-built by another team.
• The strong links between work-item tickets and change-sets have enabled simple reporting of changes to software.
• This adds business value by reducing time-to-market.

• Complex client application and web interface that try to do it all.
• Plans are built on the browser: They cannot be copied to other media, such as Excel. They cannot be exported.
• Source control via streams is a bar to acceptance for many developers who have become used to SVN or Git.
• The number of active users seems to be low. This is reflected in the lack of easy-to-access online resources.

I have used it for two years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I have not contacted IBM for help. Generally, it’s a complex product and the customization is not well understood by many.

We used a different solution. The move enabled the team to leverage work already done to create a fully continuous integration process.

The initial setup was not that simple. There was a steep learning curve for first time users and even steeper when configuring workflow and work item types.

We did not evaluate other options. I personally have used a number of others in the past including:

• QC
• SourceSafe
• CVS
• SVN
• JIRA

I’ve found JIRA with SVN to be the easiest to pick up from scratch. On the downside, there are number of tools that need to be installed to enable true end-to-end control and traceability during software development, test, and deployment.

Consider the Atlassian tool set and an open source control system.

Change management fully integrates with configuration management. Also, this product can work with almost any software development process you use: agile or traditional.

The search functionality for files in branches (streams) is very weak.

I have used Rational Team Concert for five years.

The product runs very nice and is stable.

We have not had any scalability issues. The product is as ready for small, centralized projects as it is ready for complex projects.

IBM usually has decent technical support.

We previously used SVN, Mantis, and others. The main reason we switched is integration. RTC has many functions integrated within a single product.

Initial setup is a bit complex. You need to install and configure the WebSphere application server, create databases, setup some environment variables, and then finally run the product setup. To be fair, the product setup is straightforward, but until you get there, you have to do a lot of adjustments.

It’s not cheap, but it is worth the price. ROI is almost guaranteed.

We did not evaluate alternatives.

I recommend this product. But it is very important that you define your software development process very well before starting to use this tool. Otherwise, you will be automating a problem.

Jazz Source Control allows users to create their isolated sandboxes and deliver code to share streams. Further integration of configuration management with change management activities like stories and tasks is seamless.

I spent most of my time as a consultant helping organizations to implement the Rational ALM solution. Rational Team Concert is the part of CLM solution and can be easily integrated with the requirement module, Rational DOORS, and the quality module, Rational Quality Manager, which allows organizations to automate the whole SDLC under the same umbrella with seamless integration.

The Project Planning component should be improved and it should offer portfolio management with cost and other financial factors like Microsoft Enterprise Project Management does.

I have been using the Rational ALM solution since 2008.

Deployment require some expertise in WAS but if you follow the guidelines strictly, it goes smooth.

The latest version, 6.0.2, is very stable.

It provides a lot of options for scalability, which includes installing each component on a different server.

Customer Service:

Customer service is good but not excellent.

Technical Support:

Technical support is good.

I previously used TFS a little bit.

Basic setup is pretty much straightforward.

I used to work as a consultant, so I implement the solution myself.

I didn't calculate ROI.

Pricing and licensing is a little complex, so consult with an expert before purchasing.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Backlog management is a valuable feature.

It helps in managing my backlog by having a consolidated view of stories, priorities, sprint, story point owners and statuses.

There is a lot of scope for improvement, namely:

• Loading of content as it is extremely slow.
• Customizing attributes like story points since it is not available.
• Page refreshes are erroneous which need to be corrected.
• An ability to write stories in rich text.

We have used this product for two years.

There are stability issues that I have encountered.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would give their technical support a rating of 2/10.

We used a different solution prior to this one and made the shift due to licensing issues.

The learning curve was high as the setup was not quite intuitive.

You should use this product only after the issues mentioned above are resolved.