IBM Rational ALM vs Rally Software comparison

"The solution is customizable."

"The word emulation and importing is good."

"It helped us contain critical things, like source code and several documents, which is very important to us."

"We have something called the GC (global configuration), which is a unique feature compared to any other competitor we have in the ALM space."

"It's easy to use."

"The transition to a SaaS-based solution is a distinct advantage."

"The tools for requirement capture we have found very useful."

"It is relatively easy to use and user-friendly once the setup is complete."

"It documents stories in a way where we do not have to be heavy on front-end requirements, front-end documentation, and front-end workflows."

"We can work better and at a higher quality, than we were able to before."

"The main ways that I used it when I was in it day to day was keeping up with the burn rate within the teams. Also, to track at the feature level too, as far as how we were doing with actually being able to deliver that feature."

"It helps with getting the alignment between strategy and execution for the product teams, all the way down to the delivery teams."

"When it comes to the valuable features of Rally Software, it excels at burn-down charts, burn-up charts, and road mapping once it's set up. I particularly appreciated the new feature for releases and road mapping, which worked exceptionally well."

"With this product, searching for historical information or the evolution of the requirement, detecting conflict between projects has helped a lot."

"Its ability to scale."

"Agile Central allows us to log one hundred percent of the work we do and it allows for no hidden work, so teams can't go under the radar with what they're working on."

"I think nowadays people are getting into Jira and other tools. What is happening is, this solution is becoming more traditional, whereas Jira and other tools are more attractive for the new users to learn and start using because of the graphical interfaces."

"The features should be more intuitive. If I'm looking for something, its location should be easy to locate."

"Some improvements to the user interface (UI) would be helpful, such as exposing more services to make it easier to customize to the needs of each customer."

"I would like to see better reporting features. The out-of-box reporting is - I don't want to say limited - but the focus is on the Scrum and Sprint reports. We need more reporting features regarding the history of the work, tracking it more deeply."

"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."

"The directory designer manager is uncivil. The design manager is clearly really unstable."

"One of the complaints from users is that they have to click buttons too many times for just a simple task. Changing this would lead to a better user experience."

"The solution is expensive."

"It could improve by being self-organizing: user stories, different hierarchies, and different perspectives. Not just as a single hierarchical structure, but something that can be multidimensional."

"I wish there was a view, like the Kanban view, where you could see the parent, and see all the children visually, so you could drag and drop where you want it to go. Something like that might help."

"From a test management perspective, it should have the capability to give you both automation and manual integration in one place."

"What I don't like about it is that it is really hard to find old work to reference information and use the reporting section of the application in terms of trying to analyze trends. If I am trying to find out which interfaces took this long and I want to compare and measure improvement from one quarter to another quarter, the reporting mechanism within Rally is very troublesome. They have an Excel plugin that you're supposed to use, but you literally have to pull the raw data out before you can do the analysis. You can't do it within Rally, and if you can, it is a secret, and I don't know how to do it. It should have better, easier, and user-friendly reporting without having to use the Excel add-in. It is very clunky. There is a lot of data in there, but it is not organized in such a way that makes it intuitive. You really have to kind of look for where do you put your documentation or dates. Some customization is available, but it is not plug-and-play like Jira. When I switched from TFS to Jira, I just went and started using Jira, whereas with Rally, you kind of have to really get in and figure out what you need to do before you set stuff up, or you're going to get yourself stuck. You can just start using Jira and be successful."

"The Reporting feature can improve, especially around executive summaries and dependency mapping."

"It's a bit cumbersome to manage the Project Picker. As we sunset teams or projects close out - but we still have test cases tied to those teams or projects that are being used in other spaces - we have this monstrous list in the Project Picker that becomes really difficult to manage and find, and we can't clean that up ourselves. It would be nice if it was easier to do that and not lose your history."

"Customization features may not be exposed or unavailable, so people may be looking for them. So, customization is an area people have told me is more desirable."

"The price of the solution could be reduced. Many of our customers are not using all the features and this could be why our clients feel the price is too high."

"IBM Rational ALM has both monthly and yearly licensing options."

"We have a contract, but I am not aware of the details."

"The solution is not cheap."

"This product is a little expensive and we had to pay extra to have them set it up for us."

"From a price point, it's a cost effective solution for our needs."

"Rally Software costs $50 a month, and for a base account, that price is acceptable."

"I understand it's a little more expensive. That is why many people prefer Jira."

"The license costs are fairly high as compared to some of the other solutions out there."

"Frankly, pricing is expensive and needs to be carefully planned for when budgeting."

"I don't know the exact pricing, but I think the tool is priced high. They provide quality workmanship, good software, regular upgrades, and they're always attentive and listen to users. Everything comes with a price. I think it's an expensive solution compared to Jira or other competitors, but it's a complete package."

"It is expensive and may not be worthwhile for a small company."

"We are always looking for a discount, if the solution was less expensive it would be a benefit."