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IBM DOORS vs IBM DOORS Next comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM DOORS
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM DOORS Next
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of IBM DOORS is 34.0%, down from 35.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DOORS Next is 8.5%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Requirements Management
 

Featured Reviews

UweSeufert - PeerSpot reviewer
Old but capable of storing, organizing, and exchanging requirements
I use IBM DOORS because my customer wants it for managing their requirements IBM DOORS is a tool from the 20th century. It is very old but capable of storing, organizing, and exchanging requirements. It helps to manage requirements efficiently, which significantly improves the way requirements…
Roger Trackwell - PeerSpot reviewer
An industry-leading tool to demonstrate traceability between requirements, with valuable features for tailoring modules and managing several thousand requirements
The biggest thing is that it shows cradle to grave traceability between the initial parent requirement and the lowest level, or what we call a CID, a critical item development spec. You can establish your verification plans in DOORS, and then as you get test results, you can put them in DOORS as a link or as a pointer to where that specific test resides on a company database. Then you can also write compliance rationale and add a column for coding, like pass, fail, green, yellow, red, meets, does not meet, partially meets, or whatever scoring criteria you want to use. Like I said, the best thing about it is that it provides you that visibility of your verification, allowing you to know how close you are to your pre-production activities, prototyping, go ahead, or whatever it is.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The shell scripting is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is traceability. We can track every requirement, including what the stakeholder must do and component-level requirements."
"The most valuable feature is the management verification and login."
"I would say that the best feature of the solution is that since everything is in one place, and if you make any changes, then they are recorded or tracked."
"IBM Rational DOORS keeps everything organized."
"It is very customizable and easy to scale."
"Makes good work of prioritizing and planning product delivery."
"Rational DOORS' most valuable feature is that you can write any kind of requirement you want."
"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation is easier to expand to build a backend with several servers, so you can also use it to scale up to several hundreds of users without major problems."
"The "Link by Attribute" feature is useful for making links without needing to use the web interface manually."
"One of the most valuable features is how you can tailor the modules."
"My company contacts the solution's technical support, and they are good and responsive."
"The most valuable features are the versioning of requirements and the possibility to reuse them."
"There are many good features with DOORS. The solution has a concept of streams and baselines, as well as a concept of components. A component is a subproject inside a project."
"It's web-based, so you don't have anything to install."
"The most valuable features are the baselines and links."
 

Cons

"The interface needs an area to be able to type your query and actually be able to find them."
"Both the performance and the price could be improved."
"The user interface for the Change Proposal System could be improved."
"I think there is probably room to improve by offering free training."
"It could be more user-friendly. It's not a beautiful tool. The user interface is gray. It has only lists inside, and it's horrible when you want to add tables. It's tough to add tables and manage them. It also becomes difficult when you want to add images."
"The software and GUI is very outdated."
"I would like to see them improve in agile management the Scrum/Kanban Board to work with overseas team members."
"Complexity, performance, openness are the three areas that can be improved. The IBM architecture and specifically Jazz looks more complex. There are a lot of servers. It's quite complicated. The search capabilities lack in IBM Rational DOORS Classic for customers who have a database with a requirement of more than 25,000 records. For example, you can search easily for a module, but it's really difficult to look for keywords through the whole database because all the modules are separated into small components, which makes the search quite complex. This is something that's really annoying because when we want to make an impact analysis, we would like to analyze the product globally. It's quite difficult to manage. The fact that you can interact externally with data makes it complex. The approach is complex and doesn't work as expected. For example, when I tried to experiment with exporting some records, the tool crashed, but I couldn't find out the root cause, that is, whether it happened because of Rational Windows or lack of memory. It was just crashing. Logs weren't very clear. IBM can try to use more recent technology for different aspects and make it easy. They can also provide free integration from DOORS Classic to DOORS. Currently, all the customization in Excel is lost, which makes it very complex. It would be a feature to make new versions compatible with features in the past versions."
"Be very careful how you load your DNG server. There are limits to the number of artifacts a server can handle."
"Both the data storage and reporting for this solution need improvement."
"I have come to the conclusion that if you are considering migrating from DOORS to DNG, don't! Instead of spending 100's to 1000's of hours doing migrations, invest those hours in a DXL programmer to make DOORS do what it isn't doing for you now."
"As a web tool, DNG can be difficult to use if the server is loaded or your network connection to it is saturated."
"It offers a bad user experience and the usability is poor."
"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation is not a very user-friendly product."
"When you are not working on it every day it is not very intuitive."
"It does have a tendency to condense the requirements. It kind of puts them in a tree format. Sometimes those trees are a little difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't personally know what the numbers are. I just know that one of the reasons we've limited it to three seats is a function of cost."
"I am not sure why it is so expensive, but one license will cost approximately $15,000 in US dollars."
"IBM Rational DOORS is highly expensive."
"The licensing cost is too high."
"IBM is a bit too expensive in terms of pricing. Customers are paying a lot for the license, and the price is quite high for this kind of environment. It is quite high as compared to what we can get today with other solutions."
"It's expensive."
"We have to pay for a license. I think it's a one-time payment as my company hasn't notified me about more charges. I don't think it's expensive for large corporations, but it will be costly for an average person."
"Pricing can vary depending on the size of the organization and how contracts are negotiated."
"The price of this solution is very high, and it increases year after year."
"The cost of maintenance is €20,000 to €30,000 ($22,000 to $33,000 USD) and there are no additional fees."
"Users can buy a three-year license for about 12,000 Euros."
"If the product price were not reasonable enough, our company would not use IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation."
"You are going to need a beefy server and a fat network pipe to it in order to make DNG and its companion tools work well for users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
9%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
8%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
22%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational DOORS?
The traceability matrix in DOORS improved our project outcomes. It helps ensure coverage of requirements at different levels, from user requirements to software requirements to test requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Rational DOORS?
Over the years, the first version cost something around 5800 euros.
What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS?
Compared to today, DOORS' competitors also excel in this discipline. Yet the price is too high. It's often not as generic as it used to be. IBM promised to find a way for a generic format that allo...
What do you like most about IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
The tool's most valuable feature is displaying requirements in a tabular format. This means you can see everything laid out in columns and rows. It is more aesthetic compared to other tools. The tr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
The pricing is considered unreasonable, and there is speculation that IBM may not be putting much effort into further development, possibly treating it as a cash cow.
What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
There is a need for improvement in user experience, as the UI is too complex and outdated. Updates should be more frequent to ensure security and functionality, especially in addressing vulnerabili...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Rational DOORS
Rational DOORS Next Generation, RDNG, Rational Requirements Composer and IBM RRC
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Infosys, Chevrolet Volt
Major health insurer
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DOORS vs. IBM DOORS Next and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.