IBM DOORS Reviews

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.

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.

We had a large number of requirements coming in as a federal contractor and we put them in DOORS. We did exports from that to map those requirements to what we were doing and the architecture that we were building. We did that in MagicDraw, which we attempted to integrate with DOORS.

Being able to track changes to requirements and being able to export is the solution's most valuable aspect.

Starting to use the solution is pretty straightforward. There isn't too much of a learning curve.

I found the user interface to be unintuitive. It's something they need to work on. I wouldn't say it is bad, per se. It is just like learning to write cursive.

I would push for more extensive integration with other tools since, for example, I needed it to integrate with MagicDraw. Building in that type of integration and other such integrations would be helpful for our purposes.

There could be a better structure around onboarding to get people started. It was unintuitive as to how to get started. It needs to be clear as to what the first things a user has to do in order to get going. 

There needs to be quicker access to tech support. When I have a two-minute question that takes two minutes to answer, it shouldn't take me 45 minutes and/or a few days of callbacks to get to the right technical support person. It's unnecessary and frustrating for the user.

I've been using the solution for about two and a half years so far.

I don't recall any issues with stability, at least no more issues than anything else has. It's not buggy and doesn't suffer from glitches. I can't recall it crashing or freezing. It's pretty reliable.

The solution seems pretty scalable, from what I have seen.

In our organization, we have about 25 people on the solution currently. We've extended slightly. I believe we have at least 50 licenses out there that can be used.

Technical support is okay. I would say it took a long time to get to the right person. That said, when I get to the right person, I found they were helpful. Overall, I'd say that their support could be faster and more responsive. They tend to be slow to react and hard to reach.

From my point of view, I didn't do the initial setup. However, from the moment I started using it, I found it to be straightforward. 

I'm not sure how long deployment takes.

I was not aware of anybody outside the organization coming in to handle the implementation, however, that doesn't mean that someone on the IT side didn't have that. I'm unsure if we had outside help.

I don't have much information about pricing. I do know that our organization bought more licenses than we need, however, so we can easily add more people to the solution when we need to.

Although I cannot say with certainty, I do not believe my company has a business relationship with IBM.

I do not know which version of the solution we are currently using.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations.

Overall, I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. While it's largely helpful, there are just a few things, like unresponsive technical support and difficulty with the general learning curve, which could make it more user-friendly.

We have different generations of all products. It lets us select and see unique attributes for each release or generation. You can use attributes to define a selection area to see which equipments are for the old versions and which ones are for the new versions. This inbuilt view is what I like in IBM Rational DOORS. So, for a database and a set of requirements, it will select and show unique attributes for a release or a generation.

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.

Actively, I would say three years and non-actively, maybe five years. I was working in the QA department, and I was reviewing and validating the main equipment with IBM Rational DOORS. So, I know the tool, but it took a bit longer before I start to work much more actively with IBM Rational DOORS.

We discovered some tech stability issues with IBM Rational DOORS Classic and did not convert to IBM. I'm not really convinced about the solution. Basically, IBM doesn't really support or doesn't want to improve IBM Rational DOORS Classic anymore. However, there are still a lot of customers who have been using this solution for years, some of them even for 13 years or so. 

I'm not sure about the support for other solutions, but the problem is that they don't really want to invest any more in IBM Rational DOORS classic. It's quite easy for a technical person to customize and do benchmarking to identify the root cause and proposed solution, but I think that IBM is not going in that direction. So, I'm not really happy. 

They are quick at replying for sure. However, I'm not really convinced about the solution, so I would expect to have a technical person who is experienced and find solutions. 

When I discovered and reported a performance issue, I got a reply that it is a well-known problem. I never saw that issue in the report. It looks like some of the bug information is not accessible to everybody.

I managed to install it without any serious or issues, so it was quite okay. I had a lot of exceptions at different moments, but I managed to find solutions on the web. 

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. 

I am validating this solution. I still have a lot of solutions that look promising, such as Jama and Polarion. 

I'm more concerned about the effort to extract the system and to train people. In the world of requirement management, usability is really important from a UAT factor. Some other solutions have a better user interface, and they are easier to understand than IBM Rational DOORS in general. Even though I have experience in IBM Rational DOORS and I'm quite familiar with DOORS concepts, I find other solutions, such as Jama or Polarion, easier to use.

Our requirement is not for a huge database, just around 30,000 records. It's a shame that IBM Rational DOORS Classic is so slow in accessing such a small number of records. It's really new to the data architecture approach from the past, that is, from Telelogic.

In the new version, they no longer support Excel. So, we have to redo the whole configuration of the project, which takes a lot of time and energy. When I look at other solutions based on the results of the benchmark analysis, they look easier to work or install.

I'm also looking into the capability to export, and I got several issues with IBM, especially with the OSAC interface. There are some questions on the IBM website to assess whether it will really work or whether it is a limitation. Because it is not a well-defined limitation, you have to try. When you try and spend a lot of time and energy and do extra work, you find the limitations in what you can do, which makes it very slow.

In the past, IBM Rational DOORS was the best solution for me because it was the only one but today, people are not really attached to IBM Rational DOOR. They have to use it, but I'm not convinced that they're really attached to it.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten. It is complex, doesn't work as expected, and isn't easy to illustrate. I would expect IBM to have something better prepared, better integrated, and more compatible with I could do in the past.

The most valuable feature is the management verification and login.

The user interface is old and clunky and in need of some improvement. In order for DOORS to be as good as it needs to be, you have to be able to get normal people using it. The problem is that because the GUI is so bad, you either have to spend a lot of money customizing the interface yourself, or a lot of money on training. Because the users avoid it like the plague, you don't get the power out of it. You end up having specialists in the requirements world doing the work instead of using it the same way you would an easier application, such as Word.  

I have been using IBM Rational DOORS for about ten years.

This solution has always been very stable and doesn't really ever let us down. We do have Citrix problems because we are centralizing it but as a general rule, it is a solid tool. There can also be problems that are caused by other people's DXL coding, as people are modifying it to work for them. However, it is the modifications that cause the problems rather than DOORS itself. In this context, there are more self-inflicted stability problems.

I have not personally contacted technical support but the feedback that I have heard is that it is like all tech support. It is normally about relationships with the technical support people. The response time is pretty standard, being a couple of weeks. In Australia, they're 24 hours and normally pretty good in terms of responding quickly.

My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is that if you're looking for a relational database, then it's probably not the first place that I would go. People are going to use it because the client requires it, as in our case, rather than because you choose it. There are much better database setups out there, which are scalable for non-IT database people. The learning curve is much shallower because they're designed from the ground up to work as a database for normal people.

Overall, DOORS is old and clunky but it does what it is supposed to do. The interface hasn't changed forever because there's no drive to make it easier to use.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The traceability matrix along with the linking of software design with requirements. We are also using it for test management, so it provides bi-directional linking between requirements, design, and test cases.

Previously we were not using any requirements management tools, or maintaining different types of requirements (i.e. customer, system, software, test cases) in our process defined templates. It gets a bit tricky for organizations divided over time zones if you're not using any proper management tools like DOORS. It helps us to standardize the way our globally distributed teams are now collaborating and managing the different artifacts.

The Import and Export feature. Additional templates and options should be made available, and it should be more intuitive along with giving users more options for control. Also, I believe it should give more options for database support instead of supporting default databases that different companies are using for productions. This would mean users will be at ease if maintaining different databases for different production activities.

I have been working on this for almost three and a half years in parallel to other IBM Rational tools.

There were some issues during the import and export using the GUI, and although scripting works well, not all users are accustomed to using DXL scripts.

Not really, but sometimes it crashes when running DXL scripts that have a number of errors. In that case it’s not possible to rule out the cause of trouble.

The solution is quite adaptable to encapsulate the growing needs of organizations in terms of growth, new functionalities, and enhancement.

I have worked in the past with one of IBM Rational DOORS partner companies, so overall they are quite supportive, and at a par depending upon the complexity of the rising issue.

8.5/10 - sometimes if you forget to mention the level of complexity they become little at ease replying to your mail, but overall it’s good to have this kind of support.

No, not any kind of requirements management solution. We were managing requirements in the form of our own Microsoft Word defined templates. Management of requirements for our globally distributed teams in a centralized location was a prime driving force for the change.

It's simple to setup the complete environment. Linking with external applications is also friendly. We are using Rational Directory Server for our user management and Rational Change for change management, so the integration configuration was somewhat easy without much trouble.

We did an In-house deployment and configuration, with own local ICT and Tools and Methodologies engineer.

Pricing is on the higher side because of multiple users who want to make use of the great functionality of tools.

Single tool licensing is good, but again it's costly, and with respect to extensions like DWA, DNG, and others, it becomes even more critical for companies who do not have high end budgets.

It’s a good choice to invest money in, and will definitely prove to be value for money, even more if it's not utilized to the best possible extent. Proper planning on board will definitely prove to be beneficial.

Our primary use case of this solution is mainly to manage all of the requirements, from the user requirements to the system requirements to the sub-system requirements. Also to manage traceability, the baseline, and the different baselines of the requirement. 

Traceability is the most valuable feature of this solution. I like that is has the capacity to manage traceability from one level of requirement to another.

The HMI is difficult to use and the user interface should be better.

The program is very stable.

It's a bit difficult to say how scalable this program is, because you are driven by the number of license that you have. I can't remember the model we're using, but I believe it is a floating license mode. Eventually, if you have too many people connected at the same time on IBM Rational DOORS, the last one can't access to the program. So the scalability is limited by the license scheme. We have around 10,000 users currently. 

Our technical support is managed internally. We don't have access directly to IBM. 

I did not manage the setup of the program, but I believe it is quite straightforward.

If you have a high number of requirements to manage and if there is a need to sustain these baseline of requirements for a couple of years, it is the right solution for you. However, if you have a small project, it's not mandatory.

In the next release of this product I would like to see a better user interface. I would like it to have the capacity to include drawing and to produce KPIs on the requirement baseline. Also, the kind of dashboard is not very convenient. 

On a scale from 1 to 10, I rate this product a seven.

The ability to link objects is most valuable, because this provides the traceability from the customer requirements to our product requirements, and ultimately our test results.

As the product development lifecycle progresses, DOORS helps to maintain the traceability as requirements change (base-lining), and as new requirements emerge.

The most difficult feature of DOORS is how it creates "DOORS tables" from tables that are imported from a Word document. There are ways to address this, but describing them in detail here would take up too much space. Workarounds include using embedded OLE objects of Excel spreadsheets or using an image of the table if it is a small one that is unlikely to change.

I've used it for 10 years.

Remote users, that access the network via a VPN, may encounter a bit of sluggishness maneuvering through the database - but that may depend on the speed of the network and the size of the database. There are ways to address this issue.

DOORS stability is quite reliable.

No issues encountered.

Excellent! IBM Rational DOORS team have always been quick to respond and knowledgeable about any issues I may have presented them.

Excellent, as well. Very knowledgeable.

Prior to IBM Rational DOORS, I've used a SLATE database to track requirements. It wasn't as user-friendly and at the time we switched to DOORS, the decision was based on what our customers were using to track their requirements. DOORS was the better choice and is still the most recognized tool for requirement traceability.

The initial setup was straightforward, thanks to the robust help files that IBM has maintained as a library that is accessible both inside the tool (Help button) and via the internet (on the IBM site). Aside from that, technical support was available as needed - even to the extent that phone support can be provided.

We used our own in-house team.

As the product life-cycle reaches maturity for a given project, the ability to re-use requirements, and their related data in other projects is very helpful. DOORS is also a great tool for discovering "orphan" requirements early in the cycle, as well.

IBM Rational will work with you if you decide to use DOORS. The support provided by the vendor is excellent.