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."The tools for requirement capture we have found very useful."
"It's easy to use."
"The integration with Git works well."
"The solution is customizable."
"The word emulation and importing is good."
"I would rate the stability of this product a nine out of ten."
"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 are seeing some real improvements in the way we do things. We are becoming more agile in the way we do it because of that and in a way that stories are managed. Stories are given lifecycles as opposed to just being entities within a tool."
"There are a lot of predefined reports. We can attach additional reports for users, like who worked on what defect and when, as well as what is the status of the release compared to the previous release. It is really endless. All the data is really linked together. Then, if all the data is linked together, there is an option to prepare reports out of it. We are very impressed with its reporting capabilities."
"The filtering options are very good once you learn them. The document reports are also valuable. You can create reports in Word and PDF formats. That's very useful."
"The solution natively supports Agile-Waterfall hybrid software development at an enterprise scale. This is very important to us. Because even though the company wishes to go Agile, we still have projects which follow a Waterfall methodology. In order for us to accommodate both, we needed some sort of hybrid system. Because if we are using a fully Agile system, then the reporting might not be correctly extracted."
"The integration points are very good. Octane gives us a window not only into our manual testing, but also our automation testing and our performance testing. We can see all results from all three streams of testing in one place."
"I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira."
"It’s easy to set up."
"People really how easy it is to customize. In some previous tools, that has been very limited, or you had to know how to write code to do some of the customizations, or it was very confusing. Going back to the user interface, they've made the customization of the tool, the workspace settings, very easy for people to figure out and use."
"IBM Rational ALM should remove the features not used by the customers and keep this product as lightweight as possible."
"The stability of this solution can be improved."
"The features should be more intuitive. If I'm looking for something, its location should be easy to locate."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"The product must be more user-friendly."
"The GUI is a little bit outdated."
"The interconnectivity between packages is a major support problem and can be improved."
"The solution can improve in the development area and the customized applications."
"Globally, I don't see many major points of improvement. It's mostly plenty of little things, and it's weird to me that they are not in the product yet. They are really details, but they're annoying details... Today, in the tool, we've got plenty of assets we can handle, like requirements, user storage, defects, tasks and so on. And to all of those elements, we can add comments. We can add comments to any asset in Octane but not to tasks. It's just impossible to understand why it's not available for the tasks because it's available everywhere else. Similarly, for attachments, you can attach files absolutely everywhere except on automated runs, which is, again, awkward. I don't understand why on this element, in particular, you cannot do it. It's little touches like that."
"We’d like to see Platform One/Iron Bank compliant containers."
"It could use just some small improvements. I would like additional features, like planning features, user story mapping, or connection to collaboration tools."
"The product's requirements management feature needs enhancement in terms of functionality."
"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."
"The limitation of Octane is that we can't do a release outside of the sprint. We can only plan the release in the sprint. With Agile and JIRA tools, we can plan the release outside the sprint and do a global release of all the projects from the sprint."
"There are some challenges when we want to integrate the tool with other products, and it takes time for a team to figure out how to do it."
"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.
See our list of best Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites vendors.
We monitor all Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
