IBM Engineering Workflow Management Pros and Cons

IBM Engineering Workflow Management Pros and Cons: Top Advantages and Disadvantages

Quick AI Summary Based on G2 Reviews

Generated from real user reviews

Users value the wide range of integration options and easy-to-use features in IBM Engineering Workflow Management. (1 mentions)

Users value the extensive integrations of IBM Engineering Workflow Management with tools like Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint. (1 mentions)

Users value the tool integration capabilities, facilitating seamless synchronization with various software for enhanced productivity. (1 mentions)

Users find the difficult learning curve frustrating, as mastering all features is quite challenging. (1 mentions)

Users find the expertise requirement challenging, needing extensive learning to grasp all features effectively. (1 mentions)

Users find the UI very difficult to navigate and require extensive learning to utilize all features effectively. (1 mentions)

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Visure Requirements

(8)

4.3 out of 5

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Manibhushana Rao G.

Product Manager

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

2/23/2018

"Agile implementation "

5/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

Very well equipped tool for implementing Scrum Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

Integration with other tools is not helpful Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Real Estate

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

11/1/2017

"Good program"

1.5/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

IBM is a great product that has been around to prove it's worth. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

I have few dislikes about this software program. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Zoltan L.

Consultant

Information Technology and Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

7/12/2016

"Pretty good, even if it really only works well as a full-suite SDLC management solution"

3.5/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

Rational Team Concert, or RTC for short, works best as a full SDLC development, test management, and release management suite. When you have your software architecture and project work management integrated into it, and have tasks assigned and processed the way they should, it really gives the management and end-users great visibility of their projects and where they are in their various phases. However to do that requires that EVERYONE learn and use RTC fully. And that is just way too high a barrier to entry for many places to surmount as they need to continue DOING rather than learning, which is admittedly inefficient and stupid and leads to bad practice becoming ingrained in an organization and thus institutionalized. However, until senior management grants enough time for people to learn to RTC fully as it should be, which is the role of the braver middle managers to push, i.e. be real leaders instead of yes-men goons for the seniors, it a such an easy set of tools to misuse, abuse, waste the potential of, and otherwise turn it into a mediocre partial solution as part of your kit for the SDLC.

That said, the following things are good:

Strong admin controls and powerful automation capabilities in concert (no pun intended) with tools like UrbanCoder for deploying releases.

Good universal work item reference system. Everything can always be found using these, unlike other systems that will use different (i.e. non-universal) references for different things, confusingly enough.

Great for managing work-streams and giving your client/business stake-holders views of your progress via easily managed browser-accessible dashboards.

Relatively easy to manage the forked development of existing stable releases by different teams, or even within the same team if need be for experimental bifurcated development.

Everyone in the SDLC has a role in RTC. Truly everyone. This makes access really nice to control. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

The admin controls are powerful but there is a steep learning curve and you WILL need support from IBM to help you there. It's just too damn powerful to manage easily at the start if you're new to it as an admin.

The concept of the SDLC in RTC is very good and plainly obvious but if you're bringing this tool into an existing organization, your devs, testers, etc. will NOT accept it readily. You MUST ensure that they have adequate time to be trained with it, have sessions to just experiment and be able to ask questions, and offer unlimited retraining sessions. Seriously. Make the RTC admins own that, because ultimately that will save YOU time and frustration as an admin as people will start learning the RTC method and become less and less likely to cause huge alarms and panics in the last hours before a deployment is scheduled. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering IBM Engineering Workflow Management:

Ensure you have plenty of time allocated for training, more training, and retraining. Forcing RTC on users with no time to learn to use it properly is a recipe for disaster. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is IBM Engineering Workflow Management solving and how is that benefiting you?

Managing the whole SDLC, from planning, development, testing, and release into the production environment.

It manages code-bases across all projects, year after year, compartmentalizing development streams readily in projects with ease. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Insurance

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

1/28/2017

"This is a great tool for agile project management"

4/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

RTC is great for organizing work using agile principles. It's better organised than some other tool I've used. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

There are widgets that can be used to summarize data. What I don't like is the inability to write my own query for the widgets - I'm stuck with whatever data choices someone else already picked for me. Also, there's a prioritized list view that uses a number to rank. I'm not able to create a query that will give me this rank number. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4/25/2017

"IBM RTC"

4.5/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

The user friendliness of the software, doesn't take too much time to train in it's use! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

There is not much to dislike about this software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Information Technology and Services

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

3/22/2017

"Software Survey"

4.5/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

Once established, it is easy to manage and monitor requirements elicited and to analyze. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

There is a learning curve to getting used to the software Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4/20/2016

"Rational Team Concert is the best Agile tool around for distributed teams!"

4.5/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

I liked its ease of use the best. The intuitive user interface made performing Scrum development a breeze. The task tracking and the ability for my IDE to use the My Work View made things much easier to keep track. In addition we had a small development team, so the fact that we were able to get 10 free licenses up front really helped us out. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

There isn't much to dislike, except for the fact that RTC is huge and there is a steep learning curve to grasp all of its capabilities. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering IBM Engineering Workflow Management:

Give it a try! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is IBM Engineering Workflow Management solving and how is that benefiting you?

We used RTC specifically for Change Control Management and to assist with Agile development. In regards to Project Management and the team collaboration it supports, it is far superior Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Financial Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

6/28/2016

"Used in software development"

3/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

Easy to use and track. used to track epics, stories in a sprint. Items can be assigned a priority Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

Have to custom cteate queries to track things. Some of these should be provided by default. Email notifications doesn't work properly Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Eva H.

Sr. Systems Analyst

Insurance

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

5/8/2015

"RTC Review"

5/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

RTC allows team members to fully own their work, progress, estimates, etc. This ownership removes the extra time and miscommunication that is associated with communicating status to a PM and the PM then entering your status and tasks in a plan and communicating it back to the team.

RTC also provides the ability of the team and each individual to create queries and charts to help them better understand the progress of their team and any issues that might be present. The dashboards are very visually pleasing, easy to set up and understand.

Keeping track of your own work and updating progress on it is very easy in RTC. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

RTC's navigation model is difficult to understand for new users. It is not very intuitive and the UI is inconsistent in some cases which adds to the confusion. Once the user has spent a few months using RTC, this confusion is resolved, but it takes a little time.

RTC does not allow a central way for a PM or a manager to manage work allocations of team members. I hope that this is resolved by an enhancement in the future. We have found that it is not effective approach to rely on each team member across a large organization to keep their allocations up to date at all time. Access to their allocations allowed to their manager would be great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering IBM Engineering Workflow Management:

If you are in a large company looking to roll out RTC you must plan and provide the following for your users:

- review your current process outside of the tool and streamline it before you move into the tool. Don't resolve your process issues in the tool or don't expect it to magically resolve them. If your process is inefficient and flawed today you need to fix that BEFORE you configure the tool to it.

- provide a fully staffed and trained adoptions support team to provide training and support to users during adoptions

- provide comprehensive documentation, job aids, guides, etc. for your users to reference once they start using RTC

- set up a governance body made up of reps from all of your user groups, which is responsible for approving all configuration changes to the tool

- ensure you have a strong sponsor from Sr. Leadership who has a vision on what you look to accomplish with the roll out of RTC and who can settle disagreements in the governance body

- prepare for the effort to take months

- prepare for major migration efforts in cases where you are replacing an existing tool Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is IBM Engineering Workflow Management solving and how is that benefiting you?

1. Previously business users would submit support requests and work intake forms via email or SharePoint, now that we have RTC all business intake takes place via RTC. It is very nice to have the requests entered where they will be managed. Also allows business an insight into the progress of their requests real time.

2. Previously we had multiple ClearQuest schemas to support and use, one for each department and often several within a department for large projects. Today, we have kept RTC consistent across the entire organization. Support is easier, and usability is much better because the user knows how to use the work items regardless of which project they are on.

3. Everyone has access to all projects within a domain, that really simplifies access management and we have not run into any issues with allowing this type of access as default.

4. Because of that consistency of configuration across projects and domains, we now have an improved ability to run more meaningful metrics. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Information Technology and Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

5/15/2015

"Rational Team Concert is the best Agile tool around for distributed teams!"

5/5

What do you like best about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

What do you dislike about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?

There isn't much to dislike, except for the fact that RTC is huge and there is a steep learning curve to grasp all of its capabilities. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.