Endevor Room for Improvement

HB
R&D Team Leader at First International Bank of Israel

The main challenges are its limited interface and the complexity of the customization. The user interface may seem outdated and affect user experience.

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Efrén Yanez - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Manager & CM Specialist & Mainframe Specialist en eSoft at eSoft 2006

If I had to comment on an area of ​​improvement or something new in the next or future version, I would like to see AI-assisted coding and impact analysis for mainframes.

It is actually a fairly complete product. It is robust with a solid history and is always growing in functionality. It has a high level of maturity, which benefits the users and the administrators.  

This tool, with its group of options, facilitates the integration with other business processes, which allows you to take advantage of other solutions by incorporating automatic functions.

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Michael Burgun - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Advisory Consultant at BT Financial Group

The solution can improve its parallel development, unlike more distributed source management systems like GIT or PVCs. It is more oriented towards single control of the source.

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Buyer's Guide
Endevor vs. Visual Studio Team System
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about Endevor vs. Visual Studio Team System and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user373500 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Engineers at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

In terms of features, I know because I'm a validation partner with CA, where we see what's coming down the pike. 

I know there's been a lot of work that they're doing on the long name support. 

Unix systems services, that whole side of the z/OS Operating System. I know they've been really doing a lot of work improving that.

The ISPF interface, adding long name support to that. 

In addition, they've been doing a lot of work on the new GUI front end to Endevor, so you could have a developer that does not really have much mainframe knowledge, and they'd be able to go on to this GUI interface, it's called the Eclipse Plugin to Endevor, and they'd be able to get up and running very quickly. No need to possess those mainframe skills, because they're doing it almost like they're working on their own PC, but they're connected to the mainframe. And sometimes they don't even know it.That's something that they've been working on and improving over the past several years. Right now we have that in a testing area and it's been working very well.

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it_user558126 - PeerSpot reviewer
Endevor Administrator at SunTrust Investment Services, Inc.

With the scrum teams that Pete McCullough is working on in the Endevor community, I really can't say what we would like. We make our inputs on a weekly basis and they work on it. Previous to this solution, we would hope and hope to get something and it would take forever, if we would get it at all. Now things are coming to fruition much faster. So there's really not anything that we're yearning for. It's coming true. I don't know what else I would suggest for improvement.

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it_user373500 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Engineers at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Some of the things we want to look at is expanded Unix system services support within Endevor. From talking to the product manager, I know that that's coming up in future versions of Endevor. They're very, very good at getting information from customers to make sure that they're going in the right direction with future releases of the product.

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MB
Head of Team Products and Communications Mainframe (MF) at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Endevor can improve parallel development.

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it_user558075 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

There are a lot of areas: using it cross-platform; across a diverse set of application portfolios, including legacy systems, as well as open systems; both waterfall and Agile development. I'm not sure I can say there's one particular focus. We can have more features.

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GD
Sr. Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Concurrent development has room for improvement.

The cost of the solution has room for improvement. 

The initial setup can be less complex and has room for improvement.

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it_user817752 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior SCM engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

If you had asked me this 10 years ago I would have had some good answers, but they pretty well addressed everything. They've got plug-ins now to run it through Eclipse, they've got a lot of APIs, they handle UNIX files. I can't really think of any serious lack that they haven't addressed. It's a mature product, and its really stable.

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it_user779220 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Senior Support Specialist at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

I do not know that there is much more that they can do on the mainframe side. They need to ditch the Eclipse plugin and just make the development environment for Z the standard Eclipse interface.

It is still kind of behind the times. It needs to catch up with all the millennials that want a distributed look and feel.

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JB
CA Endevor Administrator at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

One feature of Endevor is its Backout feature. If there is a problem, it can back out the executables. The only problem with that is that it will not back out the source in Endevor. For example, you can do a back out and it will back out the executable to the previous version, but it doesn't back out the source version in Endevor. It would make it much better if when you did a back out of Endevor, it would back out both the source and the executable and keep them in sync. Right now, if you do a back out and you leave it out, you have to sync the source code back in Endevor. That can be a challenge.

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ND
Manager, Enterprise Release Management at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

It is interesting because we are just starting to employ some of the new features. We just put a new version in last weekend. 

I would like to see more of automation pieces. I think that is going to be where we need to go to make things faster to get to our customers.

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GP
Sr. Analyst/Technology Infrastructure at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I know there is capabilities for web enablement to use with Eclipse, but we have not gone down that road any at all.

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it_user558165 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Infrastructure Engineer at Thrivent financial

As a matter of fact, I am involved with end-of-sprint reviews. The product is being managed by the Agile development process. I've been invited as an owner of the product from outside to actually participate in the end-of-sprint reviews. I'm able to ask questions about features they're representing, as well as to request updates through the CA Community site.

There's always room for improvement. It's just a matter of what that improvement would be. I actually attended a recent CA conference to try to better understand how to utilize Endevor at our own shop, in an Agile development methodology. Currently, I'm pretty much all waterfall-type progression, so I’m not very agile at all. But more and more areas of our company are turning to Agile management.

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it_user493998 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Analyst at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The parts of Endevor which we use do not need improving as they work very well.

Endevor offers many flexible processing options, but our organization does not use the product’s capabilities to their fullest potential. The processing options in our shop work quite well and are easy to understand.

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LS
IT analyst at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

The scalability of Endevor could improve.

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it_user558255 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mainframe System Administrator II at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

It does what I need it to do.

If there was anything, I would say there are a lot of screens in it. The process for moving out my other solutions, it could be more convenient. There are a lot of steps to go through and a lot of screens to go through to get it accomplished. So, if there was something for improving it, then maybe minimizing the amount of work it takes to go through.

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it_user558000 - PeerSpot reviewer
CA-7 Administrator at The Home Depot
  • I would like to see it used for Hadoop, which is really huge now. I would like to see it integrated with that concept.
  • It's primarily a mainframe product, but I would love it be more scalable outside of the mainframe, such as on Windows and Unix platforms.
  • Durability
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it_user814443 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Configuration Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Interfacing with some change control products that are not CA's, it's a little glitchy on the approvals of changes. It requires special needs for the users for approvals, so the user interface for approving changes could be better.

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it_user558645 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mainframe Performance Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

While CA is able to react to our requests for new features, I think the downside is they don’t use as much long, or medium term strategy anymore.

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it_user778587 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mainframe Release Systems Engineer at Jack Henry & Associates

The graphical user interface. It would be a big tool to change (but needed), just because as the workforce kind of ages and retires, the younger generation is not as familiar with mainframe and looking at a green screen is not really a huge selling point to them. So, adding an updated graphical user interface and making it a little bit more like Eclipse, also making it more widespread, making it easier to install, and getting it setup, would be great. 

Otherwise, Endevor does what it needs to do and it is hard to say that it needs any kind of massive change because of its great scalability, and because of its great availability. It does what it needs to do, so it is hard to say anything needs to change massively.

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it_user779040 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager Quality Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I think the main focus should be the continuous delivery aspects. How can I have a single view of the distributed core and the mainframe core, coming together in one wholesome, holistic experience?

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it_user386565 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Communications Analyst at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

They’ve got little things that I would like to see. It’s more for the administrative side as opposed to the developer who uses Endevor. Since I’m one of the administrators, I'd like to be able to use wildcards a little more often when I’m querying things.

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it_user779307 - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Learning the tool for the first time was extremely difficult, and it could be because of all the other processes we had around it. But knowing you can do these things in batch, you can do things in the foreground or online mode, and then these, you have to have a package for. There are these rules, and some of the concepts inside the tool are not clear, like what is the CCID? Why do I have to have one? What is that? And how is it used? As a developer, it's not important to me - I don't know what a CCID is, and I don't care - but apparently it's important to someone.

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it_user532116 - PeerSpot reviewer
Configuration Management Analyst at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Endevor can be very rigid. When you install and set up your map which controls the way code moves between stages it is important to be sure it is like you are going to want it for the long hall. The map is complicated to change once code is in flight. Each stage is related to the next and this relationship can only be changed when elements are at specific points in the migration cycle.

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it_user778980 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

It may seem a little abstract, but when somebody approves an Endevor package, if they are able to approve, and let us say there's four different approvals that are needed. If they have the ability to approve at four different levels, and if they check off to approve the package it will approve all the way through. If I would like the person to be able to approve at one level. It doesn't matter which one it is, but they only can choose one thing, then somebody else has to do the other approvals. There is no way around it. I spent an entire day trying really hard once to figure out how to do that. In a shorter sentence, the ability to restrict one approval per approval level would be a big deal for us. 

Sometimes finding errors and output can be difficult because it spits out so many messages that it is hard to figure out which ones are the ones you need to look at and what flow did it actually take through the processor is what they call them. There are a lot of if-then-elses, sometimes it is hard to figure out which if-then-elses it actually did. When you can turn on what they call a trace, but if somebody asks you a question you want to just say, "Which one ran and which one failed?" That's not always easy. That could be a little easier. 

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DC
0 at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The product’s implementation process is complicated and restrictive. It is difficult to find file programs and use a different tool for the setup as the compilation process is all locked up, at least in our implementation. We might switch to MySQL for the same reason.

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JS
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The solution is very good and prevalent in larger organizations, but the solution can be improved by integrating more smoothly with the open world.

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it_user572874 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Experian

There is one feature, the sandbox feature, that allows you to virtually create environments for developments and then, once your project is done, those environments go away as you move up through the lifecycle. You can always build new environments.

That's a very good feature, but there are pieces of it that make it difficult to use for my company because of the way we have our data set up. There are some features in there I would like to see improved.

The Sandbox feature was added a few years ago and would be very helpful, but there are several companies that cannot use the feature due to the design. The Sandbox feature reuses the Subsystem field as an identifier for the sandbox then returns the modules back to the original subsystem when done. However there is no mechanism to save the old subsystem field at the module level, so only modules from one subsystem can go into a sandbox. That’s great for standalone or simple applications.
My company uses object oriented code with several layers, so one application may use many subsystems. Without the ability to map the modules back to their original subsystems we cannot use the sandbox feature. It would have worked well if a new field was introduced for the sandbox name instead of using the subsystem. Perhaps a new field or table could be added that would save the old subsystem so it could be replaced when the modules move out of the sandbox.

Currently the only solution is to continue creating environments for use with agile development which is a maintenance nightmare, or ask the application teams to redesign their software so it is contained within their own applications. This is not an option. So we’re going with the maintenance nightmare. I’ve tried designing a solution around the sandbox feature but it will be just as complicated as writing my own solution.


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it_user348219 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Manager at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

I like the stability and CA’s responsiveness, but I haven’t used anything else, so it’s hard to judge. I don't have a frame of reference to know whether there may be something better.

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it_user558621 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Information Security Architect MF at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

More of the following:

  • Web-based deliveries
  • Web-enabled configuration
  • Dashboards

Therefore, we can report on our delivery quicker to management. 

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it_user616050 - PeerSpot reviewer
TSC Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I find the ISPF interface to be lacking. It seems like you have to navigate to a lot of different screens to work with the same element.

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it_user481212 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Globally this product manages back end process powered by z/OS. The interface could be improved in terms of the MMI/HMI. For example, with monitoring, the graphic view of the evolution of the IS.

Conceptually this system is based on a centralized vision. An improvement axis should exist to help you open your system and to decentralizing it. Converge a unified HMI for, and propose, more analyses and opportunities for the graphical analysis of the content of data included in repositories.

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it_user779235 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Some of the things that we have talked about are trying to move towards Agile, and trying to map back. If I'm migrating once in a code that maybe solves multiple projects, or multiple user stories, or features. Being able to try and do that one-to-many; because right now we're just doing one-to-one.

If it were able to help us map back that code to basically what initially was running, that would help, because sometimes it can be multiples, I can install one release of a product that may have multiple originating.

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it_user778830 - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It is already there. We have not really implemented it. We just have to get it to Managed API source.

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it_user821958 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology and Services Consultant and Contractor at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

More audit capability when it comes to changes to settings that are made by administrators, as many of these are done through the panels and are therefore not logged as an action against a configuration item. 

Also, more flexibility for package approvals. Some new features are coming, but there will always be someone that needs something just a little different. Having the ability to choose approval order/approval disqualification in any combination, and defined at a stage level so that rules can be different, according to the location of the SDLC.

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it_user538221 - PeerSpot reviewer
Component Management at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

This software is made to keep the components' and change history. There is no concept of application and version management of these applications. It is in this area that it could be improved.

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GP
System Programmer

There should be better integration between CA Endevor Software Change Manager and Zowe.

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it_user351306 - PeerSpot reviewer
President, Senior SEM Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I'd like the processors to provide us the ability to dynamically set a symbolic.

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it_user481224 - PeerSpot reviewer
Process Specialist II at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The Eclipse based UI still needs improvement and CA is working on that in v18.

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SG
Analyst & Developer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

I would like to have better integration with other products.

It's impossible to work in parallel mode with the source. For example, we have one check for many banks and you can't change the parallel source for different projects.

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it_user779100 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Administrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Probably more of a web-based option for it, because it is mostly mainframe. We are looking for more web solutions to expand our users that are not mainframe savvy. 

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Buyer's Guide
Endevor vs. Visual Studio Team System
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about Endevor vs. Visual Studio Team System and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.