IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is an end-to-end engineering solution used to manage system requirements to design, workflow, and test management, extending the functionality of ALM tools for better complex-systems development.
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OpenText Dimensions RM
Score 6.0 out of 10
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Formerly Micro Focus Dimensions RM, and earlier Serena Dimensions RM, OpenText Dimensions RM is a full-featured requirements management solution. Its web-based capabilities are designed to enable efficiency in modern system and software development.
While working on a complex project it is important all the needed change requests are handled in an effective manner, this tool helps us do exactly the same, it had great features to manage those change management tickets, making sure to merge the change with existing workflow, prioritize the requests centrally so there are no duplicates. Easy to collaborate across different teams and colleagues across the aisle.
Serena RM is well suited for mid to large size companies, with mature processes in place, that want to standardize project methodologies across the IT department, and want to give users a collaborative role in the requirements and testing process. It is especially powerful when used with Serena CM, integrating change management and the code repository with the full project life cycle. It is not as well suited for smaller organizations, or organizations that do not have mature processes in place (unless they are using RM as the tool to strengthen processes). RM would be burdensome and restrictive in that scenario. Serena products are well suited for environments that are under heavy regulatory restrictions due to the roles based workflow and traceability that can be put in place
There are a couple of areas where IBM Rational DOORS is quite strong. First, it is part of the IBM CLM solution so the artifacts developed in this module can be easily available for other functions like development and QA. They can link with their stories and test cases and team leads and managers can use traceability matrix to find out where there are gaps in coverage.
Comprehensive configuration management functionality (concept of multiple streams and global configuration) is available, which can be helpful if you need to implement configuration management scenarios for your product or project. For example, a certain version of a requirement can be linked with one story and another version of same requirement can be linked with another story. This is the unique feature which other current tools in the market don't provide.
It's highly customizable so you can configure the project areas based on your need. You can have your own requirement types, and you can define templates to speed up the process. Comprehensive review functionality is there as well.
Traceability - will allow you to see end to end how requirements are related to each other, to project artifacts, how the requirement was tested, and the implementation code (when using with Serena CM).
Baselines - these are snapshots in time which are typically used at project phases and milestones. They allow you to see all aspects of a project from requirements to testing and how it has progressed or changed over time.
Test Management - test steps, execution, defect management are all included in RM, providing a powerful SDLC management platform.
Too complex for projects or businesses that don't really need the detail. It is basically overkill.
If you are new to IBM Rational tools, it may be a medium learning curve. You'd also need lots of training from your people, since, as usual, this tool shouldn't be managed alone.
It may seem old fashion compared to Jira and the current control tools used in IT industry.
One of the downsides for us was the capabilities of the native build tools were lacking. The project management and work item tracking capabilities are great and I would recommend the tool to anyone. There is a definite learning curve with RTC as a source control system, and the streams are a concept unique to the product
The UI is terrible and not intuitive. Users need training in order to complete tasks. Much like SAP, it's not the clearest tool. The tracing feature is especially complicated because you must write the scripts yourself. There is a learning curve. Also, even the setup, installation, and logging in each time takes a considerable amount of time.
It does a basic job and has the potential to complete some robust reporting tasks, however, it really is a clunky piece of software with a terrible user interface that makes using it routinely quite unpleasant. Many of our legacy and maintenance projects still use DOORS but our department and company use many alternatives and are looking for better tools.
The established experience contained in most IBM Rational DOORS installations is only compensated by the high flexibility of Atlassian JIRA. The markets state that Jira is less expensive in the setup. There are many manufacturers that support IBM Rational DOORS to have the big tiers as their customers. Jira has problems in that growth. Jira has more features compared to IBM Rational DOORS. For example in cloud support, IBM Rational DOORS relies on improved external services while Jira abstracts in the most modern way. Jira experts have a different professional background compared to that of IBM Rational DOORS. They are indeed from different engineering generations. There is little interchange in personal and ideas.
Micro Focus Dimensions RM make management of all the important requirement and databases easy to use and user friendly. great application for project management and team management.
RTC helps automate incident management workflow which improves our work efficiency. With the integration with Geneos and GSD, we can one click create RTC incident tickets from Geneos with most of the information copied from Geneos automatically and then link the details to GSD for privilege account management if needed.
RTC provides a holistic view on ad hoc production activities. We use RTC for production management. Whoever needs to get access to production due to non-planned activities (planned change is managed in GSD) has to raise an incident ticket or service request ticket in RTC so as to get production privilege accounts.
RTC is also being used to review and approve the usage of privilege account which help us to meet audit requirements. For example, if a user made some database change using privilege account under incident number xxx, an entry will be added in RTC and sent to account owner or production support manager to review and approve.
