IBM Rational Quality Manager vs TFS vs Tricentis qTest comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Rational Quality Manager, TFS, and Tricentis qTest based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Latest features include versioning of testings which can be great when used for multiple releases of a product.""Reusability and integration capabilities which make it a great choice for organizations that use a variety of development tools and platforms.""It's very reliable as a solution.""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.""The one feature that has not allowed us to switch to any other solution is the integration with functional testing.""RQM is something that we use everyday, so it has to be up and running, otherwise we would lose everything.""It allows user to add whichever widget (predefined) based on the need. It has integration with CCM and RM to achieve traceability.""RQM's best features are integration with test automation and performance testing."

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"We use TFS for forecast management.""TFS's best features include user-friendly test management, bug reporting, and ID assignment.""Complete integration with VS IDE and Office tools: This give us a possibility of high-level automation, thus minimizing human error.""I have found almost all of the features valuable because it integrates well with your Microsoft products. If a client is using the entire Microsoft platform, then TFS would be definitely preferable. It integrates with the digital studio development environment as well.""It is easy to push our changes from quality to pre-prod and prod.""The solution's iteration board is good because you can track all your work with it.""The traceability is valuable. While managing the workflows, it was always nice to have that traceability from requirements and all the way through design. It integrates with Microsoft Test Manager, and you can have everything that is related to a requirement attached to it.""The tool's installation is straightforward."

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"qTest helps us compile issues and have one place to look for them. We're not chasing down emails and other sources. So in the grand scheme of things, it does help to resolve issues faster because everyone is working off of the same information in one location.""The main thing that really stuck out when we started using this tool, is the linkability of qTest to JIRA, and the traceability of tying JIRA requirement and defects directly with qTest. So when you're executing test cases, if you go to fail it, it automatically links and opens up a JIRA window. You're able to actually write up a ticket and it automatically ties it to the test case itself.""I like the way it structures a project... We're able to put the test cases into qTest or modify something that's already there, so it's a reusable-type of environment. It is very important that we can do that and change our test data as needed...""The solution's real-time integration with JIRA is seamless.""The test automation tracking is valuable because our automated testing systems are distributed and they did not necessarily have a single point where they would come together and be reported. Having all of them report back to qTest, and having one central place where all of my test executions are tracked and reported on, is incredibly valuable because it saves time.""UI and UX are pretty easy to understand without much of a problem.""The most important feature which I like in qTest manager is the user-friendliness, especially the tabs. Since I'm the admin, I use the configuration field settings and allocate the use cases to the different QA people. It is not difficult, as a QA person, for me to understand what is happening behind the scenes.""Works well for test management and is a good testing repository."

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Cons
"Mainly Quality Assurance and DevOps, but of course the whole company and management areas with more knowledge of quality and client success approach.""While RQM allows for running tests and viewing results, it could be further enhanced in terms of performance and speed.""Organizing the test cases is tedious. There is no mechanism to keep and maintain the test cases as hierarchy. This should be seriously addressed.""Adding support for uploading a collection of test cases would be a helpful addition.""Currently, the user interface needs to be more user-friendly.""I think it's fine from a performance perspective but usability is something that needs improvement.""It would be helpful if we could assign a hierarchy to a group of test cases.""Integration capabilities with other vendors' tools should improve."

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"TFS's CI/CD, project pipelines, and management development could be improved.""The user interface could be improved to make it simpler and increase usability.""I only use 1% of the functionality, so I am not familiar enough to know what needs to be improved.""The execution of test cases could stand improvement.""Integration from Visual Studio could be improved.""The dashboard needs more enhancements.""TFS is scalable with different Microsoft tools for test management but it is not scalable with other third-party tools.""TFS needs to be stable."

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"Reporting shouldn't be so difficult. I shouldn't have to write so many queries to get the data I'm looking for, for a set of metrics about how many releases we had. I still have to break those spreadsheets out of there to get the data I need.""I really can't stand the Defects module. It's not easy to use. ALM's... Defects Module is really robust. You can actually walk through each defect by just clicking an arrow... But with the qTest Defects module you can't do that. You have to run a query. You're pretty much just querying a database. It's not really a module, or at least a robust module. Everything is very manual.""I would really love to find a way to get the results, into qTest Manager, of Jenkins' executing my Selenium scripts, so that when I look at everything I can look at the whole rather than the parts. Right now, I can only see what happens manually. Automation-wise, we track it in bulk, as opposed to the discrete test cases that are performed. So that connection point would be really interesting for me.""The support for Tricentis qTest has room for improvement. The response could be better.""Could use additional integration so that there is a testing automation continuum.""As an admin, I'm unable to delete users. I'm only able to make a user inactive. This is a scenario about which I've already made a suggestion to qTest. When people leave the company, I should be able to delete them from qTest. I shouldn't have to have so many users.""You can add what I believe are called suites and modules. I opened a ticket on this as to what's the difference. And it seems there's very little difference. In some places, the documentation says there's no difference. You just use them to organize how you want. But they're not quite the same because there are some options you can do under one and not the other. That gets confusing. But since they are very close to the same, people use them differently and that creates a lack of consistency.""The user interface has a somewhat outdated design, which is certainly an area that could be improved."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The licenses of these tools (the whole CLM package) is very costly as compared to other vendors' tools."
  • "Each license includes 12 months of customer support. A free 90-day trial of the software is also available."
  • More IBM Rational Quality Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's just as expensive as HPE ALM, without many of the features, best used for development tool only to avoid higher costs."
  • "TFS is on the higher side, but if you intend to use the tool as a complete ALM tool, it will reduce your costs in the long run."
  • "Use the Microsoft recommended “seat-based” licensing model. This allows a single developer with multiple machines to consume only one client license."
  • "If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services."
  • "It is pretty expensive compared to other project management tools."
  • "The pricing is reasonable at this time."
  • "TFS is more competitively priced than some other solutions."
  • "We pay subscription fees on a yearly basis and the price is reasonable."
  • More TFS Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price I was quoted is just under $60,000 for 30 licenses, annually, and that's with a 26.5 percent discount."
  • "Our license price point is somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 a year."
  • "It's quite a few times more costly than other tools on the market."
  • "We're paying a little over $1,000 for a concurrent license."
  • "We're paying $19,000 a year right now for qTest, with 19 licenses. All the on-premise support is bundled into that."
  • "We signed for a year and I believe we paid $24,000 for Flood, Manager, and the qTest Insights. We paid an extra for $4,000 for the migration support."
  • "For the 35 concurrent licenses, we pay something like $35,000 a year."
  • "For me, pricing for Tricentis qTest is moderate, so that's a five out of ten. It's more affordable than my company's previous solution, which was Micro Focus ALM."
  • More Tricentis qTest Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The one feature that has not allowed us to switch to any other solution is the integration with functional testing.
    Top Answer:IBM Rational has the RFT, which is rational functional testing. We do test automation with rational functional testing… more »
    Top Answer:We create test cases, and then we need to plan a new task plan feature from the existing task case file and execute the… more »
    Top Answer:TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft's technical team is supportive.
    Top Answer:There is a yearly licensing fee that needs to be paid.
    Top Answer:I found the reporting aspect to be the most valuable as it provided a comprehensive overview of the efforts needed and… more »
    Top Answer:Based on whatever I heard, I can say that Tricentis qTest is a little costlier than other test management tools, like… more »
    Top Answer:The user interface has a somewhat outdated design, which is certainly an area that could be improved. Some of the… more »
    Ranking
    8th
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    8.3
    2nd
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    2,281
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    1,375
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    8.0
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    Rating
    8.7
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Rational Quality Manager
    Team Foundation Server
    qTest
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Rational Quality Manager is a next-generation web-based collaboration tool that provides test artifact management, construction, and planning throughout the entire development process. IBM Rational Quality Manager is based on IBM’s successful Jazz™ platform and derives many of its popular intuitive features from Jazz™.

    IBM Rational Manager was developed for every type of test team in the marketplace today. Every role is included, such as test manager, test architect, lab manager, tester, and test lead. The solution is also able to include various roles outside the established test organization.

    IBM Rational Quality Manager Features and Benefits:

    • Customizable design and construction: Users can easily define the overall design for each and every test case. Every test case contains a robust text editor, which can include background data concerning the test case. Test cases can include links to developmental requirements and items. They can also include test artifacts, such as test scripts, test case execution processes, and test plans. Test cases can also be integrated with test suites.

    • Intuitive reporting: IBM Rational Quality Manager provides an intuitive set of predefined reports to ensure users get comprehensive status on all projects. Additional customized reports can be made available by using the Development Intelligence or Rational Insight features for more precise reporting. Users can view live test execution status and are also able to discover the relationship between test artifacts, development artifacts, and requirements in the traceability view.

    • Exhaustive test planning processes: Users define and customize test plans that will drive all activity for the organization's teams through every component of the project’s lifecycle. Everything is developed around the concept of: “ Is this ready for release?” The test plan defines the project scope and test effort, and contains the key indicators so all team members will understand the desired outcomes.

      Top test plan tasks include (but are not limited to):

      • Definition of test and business objectives.
      • Evaluate the size of the test effort.
      • Define different environments to test and develop test configurations.
      • Develop entrance criteria, exit criteria, and overall quality goals.
      • Create a review and approval process for the test plan and/or individual test cases.
      • View Real-time Test Progress

    • Collaboration made easy: Users can easily share data with other members of the team with the Collaboration Lifecycle Management (CLM). Team members can also assign tasks and view each other's progress. They can also distribute work for review and track the input and status of each reviewer. There is also the ability to lock artifacts to prevent others from editing a completed piece.

    • Security: IBM Rational Quality Manager can protect against attack threats and data breaches with the IBM AppScan Tester. This can help achieve higher quality and more secure applications with greater positive outcomes at a very reasonable competitive cost.

    • Governance: The solution will ensure that an organization’s business processes are in compliance with department, corporate, industry, regional, and government regulations and standards. IBM Rational Quality Manager will correlate test processes and create suitable records of testing results and project history to comply with any auditing process.

    Visual Studio’s Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a powerful application development lifecycle management solution. It aids developers in managing every aspect of their DevOps and application creation. TFS combines many different types of solutions into a single powerful platform.

    Visual Studio TFS Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy TFS include:

    • Build automation. TFS enables users to create definitions that can easily automate any and all tasks that are critical to the development of their applications. Businesses can utilize features that are built into TFS to accomplish preset tasks that can help them create the application of their choice. This can include enabling them to run automated tests when the need arises. Additionally, users can create custom tasks that will run automatically and allow users to focus their attention on the areas that most demand their focus.
    • Security. TFS is designed with the security of a user’s DevOps in mind. It enables an organization to restrict user permissions so that only developers that are meant to have access to particular parts of the development process can perform tasks related to those sections. It segments the development process to reduce the possibility of sensitive data being stolen.
    • Enables product rollbacks. TFS keeps copies of past versions of the organization’s application. Users can sift through the different versions that are available and can redeploy the version that best fits their needs should it ever become necessary to do so.

    Visual Studio TFS Features

    • Source code management. TFS comes with all of the tools that developers need to completely manage their source code. They can share their code so that multiple developers can work on the same project. Additionally, TFS enables them to do things like review the history of a particular piece of source code.

    • Project management. Organizations can leverage the wealth of project management features that TFS offers and ensure that their projects run as smoothly as possible. Project managers are able to use TFS to control every aspect of their project, from the planning stage until the application’s development has reached its conclusion.
    • Reporting. TFS enables users to generate reports that leverage critical metrics and provide them with important insights into the applications that they are creating. These comprehensive reports can be secured so that only users with the proper level of clearance can access them.

    Reviews from Real Users

    TFS is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its source code management capabilities and its powerful integration suite.

    Carl B., the vice president of engineering at Vertex Downhole Ltd, writes, “The most valuable features are related to source code management. Using TFS for source code management and being able to branch and have multiple developers work on the same projects is valuable. We can also branch and merge code back together.”

    Ashish K., the principal consultant at Wipro, says, “I have found almost all of the features valuable because it integrates well with your Microsoft products. If a client is using the entire Microsoft platform, then TFS would be definitely preferable. It integrates with the digital studio development environment as well.”

    Tricentis is the global leader in enterprise continuous testing, widely credited for reinventing software testing for DevOps, cloud, and enterprise applications. The Tricentis AI-based, continuous testing platform provides a new and fundamentally different way to perform software testing. An approach that’s totally automated, fully codeless, and intelligently driven by AI. It addresses both agile development and complex enterprise apps, enabling enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation by dramatically increasing software release speed, reducing costs, and improving software quality. 

    Sample Customers
    Ehrhardt, Cisco Systems, Anadolu Hayat Emeklilik, CareCore National, ItaÒ BBA, Barr
    Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
    McKesson, Accenture, Nationwide Insurance, Allianz, Telstra, Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton (LVMH PCIS), and Vodafone
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Government43%
    Computer Software Company29%
    Healthcare Company14%
    Transportation Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Retailer8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm26%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Energy/Utilities Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization51%
    Computer Software Company7%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Insurance Company18%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Insurance Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise64%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise4%
    Large Enterprise67%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise57%
    Large Enterprise34%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise65%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise72%
    Buyer's Guide
    Test Management Tools
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about OpenText, Microsoft, IDERA and others in Test Management Tools. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.