IBM Rational Quality Manager vs TFS comparison

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.”