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PTC Windchill RV&S

Score7.7 out of 10

23 Reviews and Ratings

What is PTC Windchill RV&S?

PTC Windchill RV&S (formerly Integrity Lifecycle Manager of the Integrity suite) is an MBSE (model-based systems engineering) suite. The former Integrity suite contains an Asset Library which supports systems-of-systems approach to design (i.e. linking models into higher-level models that subsume them), a Process Director which is designed to articulate, manage and improve the design process, and a Modeler for visualizing and controlling the product design process. The Integrity suite is rebranding and being integrated into the Windchill product suite.

PTC Windchill RV&S is our well-performing MBSE tools of choice in rapid changes

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

There is a group of engineers that work on the interface to validation preparation and validation. They are in need of tools that connect their systems and software. They need to organize and manage their requirements, models, codes, and tests. PTC Windchill RV&S supports and allows to manage complete trackability of activities on the whole software life cycle. The software allows for improved strategy finding and optimization in end-to-end scenarios. There is room for cross-discipline collaboration. The client-server architecture is comfortable and allows for several well-introduced strategies and rigorous control. PTC advertizes PTC Windchill RV&S 12.3 as a flagship for PLM. We agree that the software package is complete for our needs and we are very satisfied with the in our company well-introduced methodologies. We are addicted to the transparency and thorough-going processes implemented. We find it guiding and prefer to follow the included best practices. The software allows us not only to organize all our validation activities it favors the control and initiation. We start better, are better in performing tasks in sole responsibility and collectively. We have comfortably adapted and customized the best practices. PTC Windchill is well accepted in the outcomes at our customers.

Pros

  • Helps to advance carefully through complicated and delicate process hives.
  • Improve thereby our time-to-market knowledge transfers along our portfolio.
  • Enhances the performances of single step in processes as well as the processes.
  • Allows for unprecedented overview in broads and in depths.

Cons

  • Decent inspecificiencies give reason for double efforts emotions.
  • The software replaces activities feedback to in computer alone.
  • As usual certain processes can not be modeled with such software per default.
  • There is the danger that steps might not be performed at all that were considered necessary before.

Most Important Features

  • We achieve an increased product quality.
  • We are able to response immediately to market requirements for profits.
  • The compliance to industry standards is comfortable and reproducable.
  • We achieve to reduce our costs in product definition and reliability proof.
  • We are able to improve of word results and organizational efforts in cost and outcome.
  • The costs of reproducing and reworking is reduced.

Return on Investment

  • We were able to enter new markets with safe success rapid.
  • We gain more reputation with governmental certifiers and accredition companies.
  • We achieved higher returns-on-investments at all and that at less time.

Alternatives Considered

IBM Rational ALM, Git, SAP PLM and JFrog Distribution (formerly Bintray)

Other Software Used

IBM Rational ALM, Siemens PLM Components, SAP PLM, IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation

Excellent tool for the software development cycle

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization has deployed Windchill RV&S. It is used by backend Engineers in our company for change management, source code management, version controlling. It aids in the proper management of the code.

Pros

  • Source code administration.
  • Managing the version.
  • Best tool for change management and defect management.

Cons

  • Editing is time-consuming.
  • The papers cannot be imported directly into integrity.
  • It is difficult to configure PTC integrity.

Most Important Features

  • Version controlling.
  • Defect management.

Return on Investment

  • Revenue growth.
  • Better customer & supplier relations.
  • Increase profitability.

Nice Source code and Version Control tool

Pros

  • Source Code management: This tool is very good at source code management. I've seen some clients, where there are teams of more than 4 members, who have tough time identifying which team member is working on which code, and when the team has to consolidate, the team have to spend considerable time to understand the code changes. PTC Integrity is best at it, wherein each member can checkout and lock the file, so that other users can't use it. Also, Labeling a specific version of the code will help in easy identification, assuming that a common naming standard is used for labeling the files.
  • Version Control: Even though version control is part of Source code management, this is an important aspect, since I had an instance when we wanted to identify the team who worked on a bug-fix in the code about 2 years back. Also, with the 4-digit versioning used, we were able to mark the specific version number based on the release, i.e., first digit for Major release, 2nd for minor, 3rd for Defect fix and 4th for very small bug-fix. Again, this versioning model is something we defined for our team. Versioning and branching of code is a very important aspect in IT.
  • Change Management / Defect Management tool: The other feature we used was for raising and tracking defects, as well as Change Management, i.e., promoting code from Environment to environment. The process defined thru the tool was such that, a user raises a request which would be routed to another Manager for approval, after which another 2nd level Manager can approve, and then the request would be finally routed the Admin team to implement the change. This workflow can always be customized based on a team to team use. Similar workflow was also tried out for Access requests in one other team.

Cons

  • Even though the tool has some cool features, the look and feel is more like an old JAVA applet view. If the GUI look and feel are improved, it would give the user a premium feel.
  • One other feature as a Qlik Architect I would suggest is to implement a code merge feature for applications, so that developers can work parallel and then merge their code. This would diversify the teams to work on multiple issues in the same application/code. I did see multiple users complaining regarding this issue, and feel that this feature could be good to have.
  • Integration with other servers, for easy deployment of code. Again from a QlikView perspective, if code had to be deployed, the code has to manually checked out to the administrator machine and then copied to the respective location, but this could be automated, the risk of manual intervention for promoting/migration of code will be much easier.

Return on Investment

  • Since PTC Integrity is global tool used by our client, the source code management was good, and the main objective has been achieved. While comparing my experience with other clients, there were some other tools, which weren't as good as PTC Integrity, and some didn't even used source code management tools at all.
  • Since we can even create new forms and create workflows, without the use of external systems, this always reduces additional investment and use the existing applications to achieve the functionality.
  • The effort involved for managing the tool is much less than other competitive version control tools which are complex to understand and use. Features like use existing filters to identify the list of files attached to label help in promoting or checking the list of files to be moved from environment to environment.

Alternatives Considered

Tortoise SVN, Big Bucket(GIT hub) and Microfocus StarTeam

Other Software Used

QlikView, Teradata Database, Amazon Redshift, Aginity, Qlik Sense

Usability

Why I miss MKS Integrity

Pros

  • Independent development sandboxes that allows each team to work on projects without affecting the delivery of other projects.
  • Change packages - identifying exactly what artifacts were changed for a given request (bug fix, enhancement, user story).
  • Integrity objects - "building blocks" - ability to create any type of container for help desk, QA, development, requirements. These are highly customizable and some simple javascript code can help with validation and workflow triggers.

Cons

  • Connectivity/client loading issues - probably not as often as I would deem a show stopper for the solution, but we had experienced a lot of connectivity issues when trying to merge or perform a backfill. Or when trying to open the integrity client, we would experience some type of configuration file corruption. We had to keep a few command prompt scripts ready to go on our desktops to kill off the old corrupted files so that integrity would launch.
  • One of the selling points for Integrity was the quick rollback functionality. Yes, rolling back code was easier than other solutions with tools to inspect change packages, etc, but it required mostly manual effort.

Return on Investment

  • Increased Employee Efficiency
  • Better Visibility and Productivity
  • Better collaboration

An Excellent Product for Version Control and Deployment

Pros

  • As a Data Modeler when I created the DDL and pass it to DBAs to deploy or I deploy thru the Deployment tool, I need assurance that the same code is deployed in all the environments and it makes easy to manage all the packages in Integrity.
  • As a Data Analyst If I need to provide documentation to other teams or I need to open the previous versions of the same document, it is very easy to manage hsi in MKS Integrity.
  • As a Project Manager it helps us to assign the Version number to the document which is unique and assigned with in Integrity, makes easy to track the deliverables.

Cons

  • I do not see any area where Integrity requires room for improvement.

Return on Investment

  • Increased Employee efficiency
  • Assurance of the Document availability with in all the departments with only single access.
  • Direct Deployment facility thru the Tool while using the Code deployment tool.