We performed a comparison between IBM Rational ALM and OpenText ALM Octane based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"It helped us contain critical things, like source code and several documents, which is very important to us."
"You can customize the board according to your needs."
"The integration with Git works well."
"Everyone in a team can work on the same platform and share the same information."
"The planning feature is rich with Scrum concepts: Sprint, Sprint retrospective, the rules in the Scrum framework."
"We have something called the GC (global configuration), which is a unique feature compared to any other competitor we have in the ALM space."
"The word emulation and importing is good."
"The cataloging is a very valuable feature. For a lot of enterprises, they end up not knowing which applications do specific features. The cataloging helps with this. It's not that verbose, but it still gives you allowances to put in more detail."
"The user experience is a lot better than any tool that I have used before. Overall, it is great. It has a smooth interface, which is very user-friendly. It makes it easier to work together and have more transparency and customization, which is very good."
"It’s easy to set up."
"The feature I found most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its ability to integrate with the CI/CD stack."
"A valuable feature is the pipeline, so that we can now connect to Jenkins and then have all the results from testing, from external, in the tool, so that we can see the whole approach from there. Also, We can work with labels so we have better filtering solutions than in ALM. And it's much smarter and leaner to use than ALM."
"Octane creates a gentle approach to Agile-based projects."
"On the user side, what I like a lot is the reporting capabilities. There's no tool, to my knowledge, that gets anywhere close to Octane at the moment when it comes to the reporting capabilities. I can do everything with the reporting. There's nothing missing. I have all the options. I can create graphs, including graphs of several types and looks."
"We like Micro Focus ALM Octane because its performance is okay, and its stability is okay, so we use it a lot. The platform is easy to use."
"Octane works well with the Jira portfolio to track the project with two methods: Agile and Waterfall. We can track all the testing in Waterfall or Agile and synchronize it with Agile tools."
"There is not enough beginner support material in the form of FAQs or simple training to help you get started."
"The GUI is a little bit outdated."
"The stability of IBM Rational ALM could be improved."
"In the next release, we expect a traceability metrics configuration where we can configure the user stories. We also expect them to improve or simplify the query process."
"Of course it would be related to customer experience. The solution is not user friendly at all. It needs an expert to use it, although the reporting feature was okay."
"I would like to see better reporting features. The out-of-box reporting is - I don't want to say limited - but the focus is on the Scrum and Sprint reports. We need more reporting features regarding the history of the work, tracking it more deeply."
"The directory designer manager is uncivil. The design manager is clearly really unstable."
"The interconnectivity between packages is a major support problem and can be improved."
"The biggest problem with ALM Octane is that it's very complex, so it's difficult to use and scale."
"The reporting needs to be improved and allow for customization. I want to build my own widgets, but I don't want to use the ones already in the system. I want to build mine from scratch."
"Also, while there is a Requirements Module in Octane, it is very plain. It's okay to have some requirements described there, but it's not really following the whole BDD approach. I would like to have more features for requirements in there."
"It could use just some small improvements. I would like additional features, like planning features, user story mapping, or connection to collaboration tools."
"Currently, Micro Focus ALM Octane is considered an old-world tool in the industry and lacks the perception of being a new-age tool among its customers."
"Because JIRA is a leading tool for both development and requirements management - everybody is using JIRA - I'm pretty there will be a use case where people are trying to connect between ALM Octane and JIRA. The back-end configuration of the synchronization with JIRA could be simplified. The architecture is really complicated. We required a lot of machines to build the cluster and the configuration was not really clearly described within the documentation. This may have something to do with the fact that the software is pretty new."
"Though Micro Focus ALM Octane doesn't have much of a bug, it lacks integration with some solutions. For example, my company has fairly new software, but it can't be integrated with Micro Focus ALM Octane, so integration with other software, particularly with less popular software, could be improved. Micro Focus ALM Octane also requires a lot of resources during its setup, and I find this another area for improvement. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the ability to customize the interface, especially when doing a manual test."
"I have yet to experience the CI/CD part of Micro Focus ALM Octane but as demonstrated by the team who is providing the services, I see that the CI/CD could improve. When we check in the code, for the code snippet that has been checked in by a particular user, you need to open a separate file. When comparing Micro Focus ALM Octane to Jira, they have a separate window in which you can click on the ID and the code is visible in the snippet. It's a two-step process in Micro Focus ALM Octane and it's a single-step process in Jira. It's essential for the developers to think about this difference."
IBM Rational ALM is ranked 10th in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 17 reviews while OpenText ALM Octane is ranked 5th in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 38 reviews. IBM Rational ALM is rated 7.2, while OpenText ALM Octane is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM Rational ALM writes "A complex deployment that is not stable, but is cloud-based". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OpenText ALM Octane writes "Reporting engine, widgets, and dashboards are a huge plus, and powerful REST interface means we can interact with other tools". IBM Rational ALM is most compared with Jira, Codebeamer, Microsoft Azure DevOps and Polarion ALM, whereas OpenText ALM Octane is most compared with Jira, OpenText ALM / Quality Center, Microsoft Azure DevOps and Rally Software. See our IBM Rational ALM vs. OpenText ALM Octane report.
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