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IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs TFS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Engineering Workflow Ma...
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (10th)
TFS
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Test Management Tools (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Engineering Workflow Management is designed for Enterprise Agile Planning Tools and holds a mindshare of 0.9%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
TFS, on the other hand, focuses on Test Management Tools, holds 8.6% mindshare, down 10.7% since last year.
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
Test Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Suvajit Chakraborty - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 31, 2023
Offers good traceability elements but UI needs improvement
There is room for improvement in the UI. The UI has to improve a lot compared to the competitive tools, like Atlassian Jira, for example. It's very easy to use. It is easy to manage and easy to use. Anybody can learn it right quickly and start with it. But IBM ELM is something where somebody has to have good knowledge, training, and understanding and then only start using it. But there's a big known knowledge curve for IBM ELM. But once that is there, it's normally; organizations do have their own internal team to basically manage it IBM ELM portfolio, the tool chain. So if they have internal teams who are doing it for quite some time, not something new, then it is definitely better. But if there's if somebody is starting new, definitely there is a knowledge curve time it can take at least a year or maybe a couple of years before they can start realizing the benefits.
Pmurki@Micron.Com Praveen - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 19, 2024
Version control is excellent and good for code review, branching, merging strategies and more
I've worked with TFS for source control and Agile project management. We also used TFS for seamless team collaboration and tracking.  I used TFS for a couple of years. Now, we use Azure DevOps. It's a wonderful tool for source control and CI/CD pipelines It's a really valuable tool for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good for managing stories, sprints, hydration and releases."
"The most valuable features of the solution are highly customizable reports and visibility for all the higher management."
"It was an all-in-one solution for source code, integrated source control, defect tracking, and project planning."
"Work distribution among team members and accountability for completion with a clearer picture."
"Agile templates give us a standard methodology for every Agile project. Also, the ability to create our own object types and linkages to features/epics allows us to enhance the verification of feature readiness."
"Traceability reporting is inbuilt and includes all your requirements."
"All of the features work together to provide a powerful holistic solution - from the dashboard all the way through to security."
"We can track the status of test cases (passed or saved) in a single view. Based on releases and other attributes, we generate various reports and extract metrics from the data."
"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."
"The work item feature is most valuable. It allows us to store all product requirements. We can also link the test cases to those requirements so that we know which feature has already been tested, and which one is waiting for testing. We can also couple the code reviews, unit tests, and automated tests into these requirements. It is reliable. It has all the features and good performance. It also has reporting tools or analysis tools."
"TFS' most valuable feature is the triage process. It is a robust solution that is easy to use."
"The interface is good with TFS."
"Some of the valuable features are version control and the ability to create different collections in terms of segregating the authorization for teams who connect to small projects."
"The traceability is valuable. While managing the workflows, it was always nice to have that traceability from requirements and all the way through design. It integrates with Microsoft Test Manager, and you can have everything that is related to a requirement attached to it."
"What I like the most is that you can set permissions on just one folder."
"The initial setup is easy, it is easy to understand and use."
 

Cons

"We have encountered issues with stability. We have seen where the entire system kind of goes for a toss when certain people use certain types of queries, which are very costly. Then the system kind of slows down a bit, and we have to monitor it."
"The solution is very heavily vendor dependent."
"If you have multiple projects on one server, the tool becomes very slow, and some reports take longer to load."
"Lacks ability to customize and reporting can be slow."
"It's becoming less relevant. For example, Maven has evolved, and in its later versions, there are plugins for integrating with source control systems, such as Git-based systems. Support for these plugins is diminishing."
"Teams need clearer pictures of resource availability in charts and dashboards along with plans."
"Some administrative tasks are difficult to perform. These could be simplified."
"The product access management features and connectivity need improvement. Rights management is also complex and could be simplified."
"As an end-user, I expect the solution's performance to be faster while staying as stable as possible."
"There are many things that I cannot do, and I have a lot of bugs."
"TFS and MTM have their own style of working and they are different from other tools like Jira or TestRail, which are simpler and easy to use."
"They have room for improvement in merging the source code changes for multiple developers across files. It is very good at highlighting the changes that the source code automatically does not know how to handle, but it's not very good at reporting the ones that it did automatically. There are times when we have source code that gets merged, and we lose the changes that we expected to happen. It can get a little confusing at times. They can just do a little bit better on the merging of changes for multiple developers."
"There's not automatic access to test case management and execution."
"I'm looking for specific options that aren't currently available, such as active status, new status, or what's currently in progress."
"The test management interface is not very handy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an expensive investment to make, so the decision should be driven on individual requirements."
"Licensing: The solution cost is high and should be brought down to increase competition."
"I've heard IBM Engineering Workflow Management is more expensive than other tools."
"It is not a free tool. We use a token-based licensing model, which is specific to IBM. The cost per token is around $115-$120."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"On a scale where ten is the highest and one is the cheapest, I rate the solution's licensing cost at one on a scale of one to ten."
"TFS is on the higher side, but if you intend to use the tool as a complete ALM tool, it will reduce your costs in the long run."
"It's just as expensive as HPE ALM, without many of the features, best used for development tool only to avoid higher costs."
"I would like to see TFS improve its web interface as there are some limitations with IDs and the integration behind it and with open source tools like VS Code."
"I was working with the engineering team, and that was not under my umbrella. From what I can remember, its license was yearly. They had the licenses on a per-user basis, and they included MTM."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is reasonable at this time."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
20%
Government
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
Educational Organization
60%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?
We can track the status of test cases (passed or saved) in a single view. Based on releases and other attributes, we generate various reports and extract metrics from the data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Engineering Workflow Management?
I've heard IBM Engineering Workflow Management is more expensive than other tools. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Engineering Workflow Management?
It's becoming less relevant for us, as we move to cloud-based and more contemporary cloud-based SCM systems such as GitHub. As new JDKs have been released over the years, tooling support in new rel...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
What do you like most about TFS?
Microsoft's technical team is supportive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TFS?
There are many version control options available in the market. From a costing and licensing perspective, I would rate it around six out of ten. It is not the cheapest product, but it offers good v...
 

Also Known As

IBM Rational Team Concert (IBM ALM), IBM RTC
Team Foundation Server
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Telstra Corporation, Visteon, Atos SE, Panasonic Automotive Systems, IBM Global Technology Services, CareCore National, JTEKT Corp., ItaÒ BBA, Avea, CACEIS, Danske Bank Group, APIS IT
Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs. TFS and other solutions. Updated: July 2019.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.