IBM DOORS Reviews

We use DOORS to document system requirements and inherit customer equirement maintain standard and conformity. It helps in traceability of requirements and restricts changes to requirements by anyone. In order to make changes to the requirements, one needs RCR (Requirements change request) which would be reviewed and approved before applying changes. It would help in impact analysis and version tracking.

It is a great tool for requirement gathering and elicitation. It brings all the business analysts in a team on the same page as everyone has the same understanding on requirements.The traceability to system requirements, customer requirement and test cases helps all teams to reference each other's work in an easier manner.

IBM DOORS has helped in keeping requirements wording and structure standard across all customer documents. It's export functionality helps in producing quality requirements with ease within short time frame. This helped in supporting multiple clients at the same time with lesser chances of errors.

• The product is less configurable in terms of Menu options. The replication of data is not as easy as excel across the rows/columns. In order to replicate, the user needs to go to each cell and make the change
• Upon losing connection to VPN/internet, DOORS can lose the content written and this requires it to be redone. The product should at least send a notification to the user about lost connections to avoid rework
• The images added in DOORS are not exported easily in word documents. They do not scale as expected

I used the tool for two years.

The software came pre-installed with the machine but DOORS upgrade took long time. It slows the machine and additional RAM is required on machines with DOORS.

Customer service is good as we got an IBM consultant to fix issues or code, but his support is limited to minor bugs. Major enhancements and bugs had to be escalated and sent to IBM which had a longer turn around time.

I have used HP Quality Center but DOORS provides better standardization and maintainability of requirements.

It was straightforward as it came pre-installed on my company machine.

It was through a vendor team. The implementation and training was smooth, but the enhancements and bug fixing took long time.

It is an expensive software but worth the spending for a larger firm which require standards across customers.

I was not offered any other option. The company has used this tool for years for requirement gathering and maintenance.

I am using IBM Rational DOORS for managing engineering requirements.

IBM Rational DOORS has helped our organization because of the sense of configuration baseline. That is key for us. With it, we can create and freeze baselines, put them on the configuration control,  and then use it as evidence. 

What I like about DOORS is baselines, it's easy and I use the capability of multiple users. The traceability or links between different levels are very nice. Additionally, it is used by all of our suppliers, which brings us commonality.

One of the things that many people complain about is it's hard to manage attributes. For example, tables or figures. This is something that can be improved. 

The most important improvement for me right that is needed is based on textual structure type, which has been good, but there are new trends and more model-based are required. For that, it's outdated, it does not work well. It's outdated when it comes to model-based requirements

I have been using IBM Rational DOORS for approximately four years.

The stability of the solution is good. However, you can access the database remotely and when you have too many users, you see the performance reduces. I don't know what the exact threshold is to where the point that it starts affecting the efficiency. I know when there are too many people accessing the database simultaneously, it can get slow.

The scalability is good in the sense you are allowed to have many users, but performance-wise it will decrease if you have too many. However, it can scale in different ways for certain other requirements, it is very good. I have no issues. It's easy to manage.

We have hundreds of people using this solution, mostly in the engineering department.

This solution is being extensively being used in organizations.

I have not used technical support because whenever we have issues, we raise a ticket and the ticket is managed by our IT. If they need any higher-level solution they will contact the IBM Rational DOORS team.

We are using Siemens Teamcenter for the same usage as IBM Rational DOORS, but for different databases, they are not interconnected.

We have an IT department that does the implementation and all the maintenance of the solution.

My advice to others that want to use IBM Rational DOORS is you need to know what is the usage you want to give the solution. If any company wants to do something more mode-based oriented, I would not use IBM Rational DOORS. However, if you have a more textual requirement, IBM Rational DOORS is a good solution.

I rate IBM Rational DOORS a seven out of ten.

In my experience with IBM, I received initial customer requirements, which I stored in an Excel spreadsheet. These are then integrated into DOORS for comprehensive management throughout the project lifecycle, including contractual obligations with suppliers and stakeholder requirements adjustments.

The platform's traceability capabilities are invaluable. They provide a solid foundation for certification processes and manage requirement changes across project lifecycles.

Enhancing security measures, particularly when handling multiple projects simultaneously, would be beneficial to prevent data loss within DOORS.

The platform has proven stable when managing several concurrent projects.

The product is scalable, but it's crucial to ensure robust security measures when managing multiple projects simultaneously.

IBM's support services have been commendable. Their support team was responsive and helpful whenever I needed assistance managing requirements in DOORS.

Positive

IBM DOORS is more user-friendly for requirement management and offers superior traceability compared to Cradle, which has a less intuitive interface.

Setting up the platform can be complex, especially when configuring modules and building diagrams.

I rate the process a seven. 

The product generates a return on investment for large-scale projects where meticulous requirement management is critical for successful outcomes.

The licensing costs for the product are quite high.

I recommend the platform, particularly for its effectiveness in managing complex requirements.

I rate it an eight out of ten.

IBM Rational DOORS is used as a requirements management tool. It enables you to do full requirements development and testing.

The most valuable feature of IBM Rational DOORS is the full requirements development and testing.

It would be helpful if Microsoft provided a more user-friendly interface for updating and querying updates. Additionally, if there was a way for users to notify developers of any changes in requirements, it would allow for faster and more efficient updates to the solution's architecture. This could be in the form of a notification system that alerts developers of any changes that need to be made. Additionally, the solution is document-driven and it should be more digital.

I have used IBM Rational DOORS for approximately 20 years.

I rate the stability of IBM Rational DOORS a ten out of ten.

We have two people in the company that uses the solution.

We do not have plans to increase usage. We are moving towards a more digital environment where we are using SysML and UML to write requirements instead of text-based messages. IBM Rational DOORS should have the capability to model these requirements, but currently, the add-on they have is not effective.

While a large number of requirements may be present, managing them effectively is a separate challenge. There are various tools available for managing requirements, such as IBM Rational DOORS, but they may not always be sufficient. Effective requirements management is crucial in this field.

The field of engineering is evolving, moving away from traditional methods of management, such as using tools, such as  IBM Rational DOORS to organize and allocate textual requirements. The 2018 DOD strategy for digital engineering highlights this shift towards utilizing models rather than documents in the digital environment. However, many people are still stuck in the old ways and unaware of this change. It is important to keep in mind that the new way of doing things also involves developing architectures using the modeled requirements.

I rate the scalability of IBM Rational DOORS a ten out of ten.

I rate the support of IBM Rational DOORS a ten out of ten.

I have used Excel spreadsheets prior to using IBM Rational DOORS.

The return on investment in system engineering is difficult to quantify as it primarily involves writing clear and comprehensive requirements. While a team may be dedicated to this task, measuring the return on investment can be challenging.

IBM Rational DOORS is highly expensive.

I rate IBM Rational DOORS a nine out of ten.

The DOORS Application provides object to object traceability, with user flexibility to build their own traceability reports without requiring administrator coding in DXL, XML, java or any other scripting language. In addition, out of the box features for generating baseline to baseline redlines is efficient when reviewing changes.

The documentation of history is automated, making the generation of reports for the change review board simple. I can extract redlines using Baseline Compare between the last approved baseline, and the ‘current’ module, which collates all of this history into a single redline report making change reviews a breeze.

Clean specification generation has become more difficult under IBM’s direction, than it was under QSS or Telelogic. Since IBM acquired DOORS, there have been bugs introduced into the out of the box print capability (Ctrl+P), while they developed a complex printing solution in Rational Publishing Engine. This takes printing out of the user’s hands, and requires administrators or software developers to build templates for generating documentation which makes the job of generating a document a project in and of itself.

I have been using and administrating DOORS since 1998 in multiple different roles, including in Systems Integration, Requirements Management, as well as Engineering Tool Support team member. I've also used v4.0.4, v4.1.4, v6.0 SR1, and v8.3 for requirements management and risk management for medical device development and on-market support.

DOORS has some issues with speed when setup in an enterprise environment. However, DOORS has been the most stable product amongst our engineering tools.

We have been very successful deploying the product to users in Dallas, Chicago, Ireland, Germany and Japan.

Customer service for all of our Engineering Tools has been trending down over the last 10 years, and DOORS is no exception. However, among the biggest of players that we use including Dassault Systems, Siemens, HP, Serena, we have found IBM’s level among the best. I have had direct customer access to the DOORS development team at multiple conferences, who have been able to find resolutions for problems, and have provided enhancement requests that have been developed into the tool over the years.

Prior to DOORS, over 17 years ago, we used a custom Lotus Notes database, but it did not provide traceability or easy reporting.

DOORS is a proprietary database, and it is a simple install of a server and a client, and you are off and running. Very straightforward in the Rich Client environment. It only begins to get complex if you begin setting up integrations using the IBM CLM environment.

In-house engineering tool support team is how we evaluated, tested and deployed DOORS in our company.

The products developed in our company that started with DOORS requirements in the late 90s are now a one billion dollar annual revenue product line. My advice on requirements management in a regulated environment, is that if you try to do it cheap, rather than efficient, your products will suffer during the market phase.

We have evaluated many tools over the years, including MKS, Siemens Teamcenter Requirements solution, and none of have met the ease at which a user can create and customize their own views and traceability reports, without an administrator performing customization.

The most valuable features were the structural flexibility of the documents and ability to specify the type of link between them. It was possible to organize a group of collections within a project, a group of modules together in a collection and a group of artifacts together in a module or a variation of that. Additionally, it was easy to design links to any of the previously mentioned entities in a variety of defined relationships.

This product improved the amount and accessibility of formalized documentation surrounding business processes. It also helped bridge the gap between business and technical documentation requirements which was a priority when trying to rebuild our CRM system using vendors in several different time zones.

In the future, I would like to see a better interactive table of contents or index page that updates in or close to real-time. As the repository grows, it becomes harder and harder to keep track of all the moving parts that contribute to the system as a whole.

I used Rational DOORS for approximately nine months during 2014 on a fairly consistent basis.

The predominant issue that was encountered was connecting Rational DOORs to Rational Software Architect. Although these two products were meant to work in conjunction with each other that never came to fruition. The result was creating a workaround by saving image files that couldn’t be automatically updated and caused the database to time out as the repository grew.

I would not rate the level of customer service and technical support very highly. Response times were high and self-serve help via their website was hard to follow for non-technical users.

No previous solution was used.

We used DOORS to elicit and gather user needs and then document them. We would then document these needs with diagrams and pictures that could be used to implement products and tests. We also used it for traceability purposes.

System engineers, software requirements engineers, software development engineers, software manual test engineers, software automated test engineers, software DevOps teams — these were the people who mainly used this solution.

We went from an ad hoc Word document to a table-driven model that could be reviewed without submitting any documents. That was a big help.

This solution is the Cadillac of similar solutions. I liked that we could export to Excel and Word. We could also link to other off-shelf tools.

Compared to other tools that I have used over the past 20 years, DOORS is the best of the best. It's expensive. It's a heavy-duty tool. 

It would be nice if it could be scaled-down so that it could be installed and implemented without much learning or training. That would also make the price more attractive.

You have to pay the premium price, but if you're a startup company or a medical device company, you'll want to create traceability immediately. It's actually simpler to use it straight out-of-box. It requires a lot of administrative work. The initial setup is not very easy — at least on-premise. A lot of training is required. It should be easier to use. 

I began using this solution in 2000. I used it at my old company; I don't use it anymore.

This solution was very stable. It took our staff a while to transition from previous technology to DOORS. Otherwise, the tool itself was very stable. In the end, people saw the difference. Especially when it came to traceability from the system requirements to the product requirements, to the software requirements.

The technical support was very good. Better than Microsoft.

An implementer did the initial installation. Based on what I heard, it's not easy to install. I don't want to say it was complex, but it wasn't very easy either. It's not just like installing  Word or Microsoft Office — it wasn't that easy.

We were a big organization complete with different teams. There were some disagreements on how the tool should be set up, how the traceability should be set up, etc. These discussions delayed the delivery or the final implementation. Otherwise, it could have been set up quickly. A lot of customers made it much harder. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.

IBM DOOR is the best tool you can purchase; it's the Cadillac of all tools. Don't be scared of its vast amount of features. Use only what you need, and don't panic about the complexity or the completeness of the tool